1950s Prime Time Pattern in Mountain Time Zone Being a midwesterner, I didn't realize Mountain time zone stations

followed the Central time zone pattern for prime time, 7 - 10 pm but each individual station in the MT zone had to tape the Eastern/Central feed for playback. Then one evening skipland was active and I couldn't figure out why there was a distant station that was a minute behind our local affiliate. Today with digital storage 1 hour delayed playback isn't a big deal. But how was MT prime time shows delivered in the 50s into the early 60s? Did the networks run a west feed where Mountain was 8 - 11 pm (or back then 7:30 - 11 pm) and Pacific was 6:30 - 10 pm? Pacific time in the '50s was a real hodgepode even after the coaxial cable linked the two coasts; for example, KPIX San Francisco would show "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" live from New York on Mondays at 5:30 (PT), while KNXT (KCBS) Los Angeles would delay it three hours to 8:30. AFAIK, the networks eventually put the West Coast on the same primetime as the East, although ABC would do some crazy things on Saturday nights in the early '60s in order to accommodate "The Fight Of The Week" and "Make That Spare," which, by necessity, aired live. A typical 1961 Saturday-night schedule would look like this: 6 PM Lawrence Welk (live, 9 PM ET) 7 PM Fight Of The Week (live, 10 PM ET) 7:45 Make That Spare (live, 10:45 ET) 8 PM Matty's Funday Funnies (7 PM ET) 8:30 Leave It To Beaver (8:30 ET) 9 PM The Roaring 20's (7:30 ET) the affiliates then getting 10-11, the equivalent of 6:30-7:30 in the East. As for the Mountain time zone, the farthest back I've looked is Denver in 1967. ABC affiliate KBTV (now KUSA) stayed with the Central time zone Monday-Friday, but on weekends would take the live feeds from the East: Saturday: 5:30 Dating Game (7:30 ET) 6 PM Newlywed Game (8 ET) 6:30 Lawrence Welk (8:30 ET) 7:30 Hollywood Palace (9:30 ET) then pre-empt "ABC Scope" at 8:30 MT/10:30 ET) Sunday: 5 PM Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea (7 ET) 6 PM The FBI (8 ET) 7 PM ABC Sunday Night Movie (9 ET) then get affiliate time 9-11 MT, the equivalent of 5-7 ET

CBS and NBC in Denver played a little more fast and loose with their networks; a number of shows which aired early in the East might air later in the Mountain time zone; I seem to recall "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." as a show which aired at 8 (ET) but not until 9 (MT). Like ABC, the other affiliates carried their networks from 5 or 5:30 to 9 PM on weekends; I recall only "It's About Time" (CBS, Sunday 7:30 ET/ 5:30 MT) airing out of pattern in Denver. I think somewhere I posted either a Mountain or Pacific (or both) schedule for November 22, 1963, what had been scheduled before the events in Dallas. And I'm quite sure that

ABC followed a 6:30-10 primetime, although "The Fight Of The Week" and "Make That Spare" might have aired in the 8-9 slot. Now as to whether these shows were fed from New York, or possibly Chicago, and tapedelayed I can't answer. I can only say that Denver's Ch. 9 was more orderly than Chs. 4 and 7 in its scheduling (same in daytime, which started with "Dateline: Hollywood" at 8:30 MT/10:30 ET and continued through "The Dating Game" at 2 PM MT/4 PM ET). bpatrick--I'd be curious to know how KBTV Denver ran the weeknight shows that aired "in pattern" 6:30-10 MT...a one-hour tape delay, or on 16mm film? Through much of the 1960s, KTVK Phoenix ran ABC "in pattern" Sunday-Friday, but via 16mm film prints. Saturday night was live network starting at 5:30. KTVK also fed the films/net feed to KGUN-TV Tucson. During the same years, KOOL-TV CBS Phoenix (which also fed KOLD-TV Tucson) typically tape-delayed the 7:30 ET hour to 9:00 MT, with the rest of the prime time schedule live 6:30-9. There were exceptions to this. And while I don't know too much about KTAR-TV NBC Mesa (Phoenix market), KVOA-TV NBC Tucson (via its own Telco line) had a whole mis-mosh of stuff--some live net, some tape delay (usually a week), and some 16mm film prints (typically two weeks after). Some shows aired on a different night, and they at times aired a local movie 8-10 Mondays. The network feeds all came out of New York. Sorry, I can't tell you how Ch. 9 did it; I've only been in Denver once and that was five years ago, after KMGH/7 had become the ABC affiliate and now-KUSA/9 had moved to NBC. IIRC, if I go by the Denver Post's listings, Ch. 9 may have been on a one-hour delay; daytime and weekends were live feeds from New York, because everything aired two hours behind Eastern time. (In fact, I do recall when Ch. 9 ran ABC's newscast at 4:30 MT, which is 6:30 ET.) Nevertheless, there was none of the airing of early-evening programs later in the evening or on another night, as Ch. 7 was prone to do. I can add one more item about KTAR-TV 12 Mesa (now KPNX)... From newspaper TV listings around 1960, KTAR-TV aired the NBC schedule "live" each night 5:30-9 PM MT (7:30-11 ET). At 9:00 it was syndication, followed by their late news at 9:30. Then it was a JIP of Tonight from 10-11 (which started at 9:15 MT). Through much of the 1960s, KVOA-TV 4 Tucson ran a 15-min. late 'cast at 10, then JIPped Tonight 10:15-11. Once the coaxial cable was opened up to the West in 1951, the order in which shows on NBC's Friday night lineup were broadcast in the Mountain and Pacific time zones (through 1960) undoubtedly was different than in the Eastern and Central time zones since NBC had the "Friday Night Fights" from 10 to 11 P.M. ET since the boxing matches were no doubt live in all time zones (10 ET, 9 CT, 8 MT, 7 PT). Once tape came in, could the Denver stations had been used as taping/refeed points (meaning they would tape the East Coast feeds of shows and then feed them out an hour or two later to other Mountain Time Zone cities)?? This would prevent local stations from having to do all that taping and rebroadcasting.

For daytime, the situation probably got even dicier. In it's early days, NBC's "Today" would be done for three hours, from 7 to 10 A.M. Eastern time, with the 9-10 P.M. hour being a live re-creation of the 7-8 ET hour. I would think that in each time zone, "Today" prior to the late 1950's went something like this: Eastern time zone: 7-9 A.M. local Central time zone: 7-9 A.M. local (the 8-9 A.M. CT hour being the re-created first hour) Mountain time zone: 6-8 A.M. local (again, the 7-8 MT hour being the live re-created first hour) Pacific time zone: 6-8 A.M. local (the 6-8 PT hour being the live re-created first-hour, and the 7-8 hour being a kinescope of the 8-9 A.M. ET hour). Once tape came in, "Today" only did two hours, with the 7-8 A.M. ET hour being broadcast at 8 A.M. CT, 7 A.M MT and 7 A.M. PT. On the West Coast, the second hour aired on tape between 8 and 9 A.M. PT; I suspect Mountain time zone stations may have aired the second hour live from 6 to 7 MT and showing the first hour on tape from 7 to 8 A.M. MT, while other Mountain time zone stations may have shown the second hour on tape between 8 and 9 A.M. local. Beyond this, some afternoon shows (Eastern time) on the networks may have been shown live or at the same hour they were shown on the East Coast (example: Some Mountain time zone CBS stations may have broadcast "As The World Turns" live at 11:30 A.M. MST/MDT). And then again, there's the case of Arizona, a state that for years did not go on Daylight Time (do they still stay on Standard time in the Summer?). This posed lots of scheduling problems for network affiliated TV stations in the Grand Canyon State. Beyond this, some afternoon shows (Eastern time) on the networks may have been shown live or at the same hour they were shown on the East Coast (example: Some Mountain time zone CBS stations may have broadcast "As The World Turns" live at 11:30 A.M. MST/MDT). For many years, in the early- and mid-'60s, ATWT did air live at 11:30 AM MT in Phoenix and Tucson. Quote And then again, there's the case of Arizona, a state that for years did not go on Daylight Time (do they still stay on Standard time in the Summer?). This posed lots of scheduling problems for network affiliated TV stations in the Grand Canyon State. Yes, AZ is still on MST year-round. But there weren't scheduling issues due to lack of DST until 1968. AZ was on DST in '67, and from approx. '58 to '66, the networks had a one-hour delayed feed in the summer for EST/CST stations, which was fed to AZ, meaning programming came in at the same time year-round. Sounds like pattern ran all over the map in the Mountain time zone back in the day, which explains why 50s network promo slides never indicated times, just the day. And, also the disclaimer "over most of these (fill in the network) stations" since it wasn't just that not all stations cleared a program but also that some stations ran the kine of the promo-ed episode a week or two later.

I thought that it would have easier to have the west feed in the 50s mimic the east: mountain prime time 7:30 - 11 pm, pacific 6:30 -10pm, but particularly in the 50s the mountain time zone didn't have enough population to really worry about. TOP 25 MARKETS WITHOUT A BIG 4 O&O The only O&O's in Atlanta are WAGA 5 (FOX) and WUPA 69 CW (owned by CBS). I'm feeling lazy help me with this............. What are some of the next/other markets with 1 or less (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC O&O)? Which market is the largest not to have an O&O? What Top 25 Markets are without an O&O? Which market/station is the smallest to have an O&O? Off-hand, I think the smallest DMAs to currently have a Big Four O&O may be Fresno (ABC's KFSN) and Gainesville (Fox's WOGX). (ABC's recent sale of WJRT [Flint] and WTVG [Toledo] has apparently closed, so those stations are no longer O&Os.) That said, WOGX may not actually count, since it's is actually a satellite station of the Fox O&O in Orlando (WOFL); also, the station is licensed to Ocala, which may actually be in the Orlando DMA. Therefore, honorable mention for Fox would go to Memphis and Austin: In Austin, Fox never put KTBC on the market, so it didn't go to Local TV. In contrast, Fox still has an O&O in Memphis (WHBQ), but only because Local already owned CBS affiliate WREG (thanks to it buying the former NYT stations). Also, CBS did sell off Austin's KEYE several years ago. The smallest DMA to have ever had a Big Four O&O may have been Marquette--when CBS owned Green Bay's WFRV and its satellite station (WJMN). WJMN is licensed to Escanaba, which I think was (and still is) in the Marquette DMA. Glancing at the official Nielsen list of DMAs (http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/public%20factsheets/tv/nielsen-2012-localDMA-TV-penetration.pdf [PDF]), it looks like the DMAs within the top 25 that are without a Big Four O&O are Seattle, Cleveland, St. Louis, Portland, and Charlotte. Both Cleveland and St. Louis lost their recent O&Os in the Fox/Local TV deal. Cleveland and St. Louis have two TV stations at one time were O&Os, but are now in the hands of others -- in Cleveland there is WKYC (NBC) and WJW (Fox); in St. Louis, KMOX (CBS, now KMOV) and KTVI (Fox). Detroit is a top 25 market where only ABC doesn't own their station. That had to do with Capital Cities buying ABC, & at that time, I believe they could only own 5 or 6 stations in the VHF band, & they chose WXYZ-TV in order to keep WPVI (then a Capital Cities station). All other top 4 network stations are owned by the networks themselves. Are you talking only about Detroit? The only Big 4 O&Os in Detroit today are WJBK (Fox) and WWJ (CBS) -- Scripps owns the aforementioned WXYZ, and Post-Newsweek owns WDIV (NBC). What are some of the next/other markets with 1 or less (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC O&O)? #13 Phoenix only has a Fox O&O - KSAZ/10 - as far as the Big 4 networks are concerned, although NBC owns the Telemundo station here (KTAZ/39). The others are owned by Meredith (CBS/5), Gannett (NBC/12), and Scripps (ABC/15).

Ditto with Tampa Bay, with Fox O&O WTVT. CBS's ownership of WTOG doesn't count, as that station is affiliated with The CW (the CBS affil here, WTSP, is owned by Gannett). #25 Raleigh/Durham: WTVD (ABC/11) is the market's only o&o. WNCN (NBC/17) was an o&o until NBC sold it and its stations in Birmingham, Columbus, and Providence to Media General. WRAL (CBS/5) is one of the few stations in the country still locally-owned, by Capitol Broadcasting, which has at least a management interest in WRAZ (FOX/50). Univision also owns a station, WUVC/40, and ION owns WRPX/47. Off-subject but Raleigh/Durham is one of three markets in the Carolinas with a Sinclair duopoly: WLFL (CW/22) and WRDC (MyNet/28). The others are Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point (WXLV ABC/45 and WMYV MyNet/48) and Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville (WLOS ABC/13 and WMYA MyNet/40). Baltimore is another with just one o&o: WJZ (CBS/13); WMAR (ABC/2) is owned by Scripps-Howard, WBAL (NBC/11) by Hearst, and WBFF (FOX/45) by Sinclair. Dallas (DMA #5) ABC doesn't own WFAA (Belo) Houston (DMA #10) NBC doesn't own KPRC (Post Newsweek) CBS doesn't own KHOU (Below) San Francisco/Oakland (DMA #6) Fox doesn't own KTVU (Cox) Boston (DMA #7) NBC doesn't own WHDH (Sunbeam) ABC doesn't own WCVB (Hearst) Washington (DMA #8) ABC doesn't own WJLA (Allbritton) CBS doesn't own WUSA (Gannett) RELIGIOUS STATIONS THAT ALSO CARRIED MANY REGULAR PROGRAMS Probably are a lot of these but the only one I am familiar with is the old WHAE (Heaven And Earth) 46 in Atlanta. The Munsters, Leave It To Beaver, Addams Family and many others were on there. tid bits from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGCL-TV on the air 6-6-71 WHAE (about 8 hours a day) 1976 station expands to a 20 hour broadcast day 1984 bought by Tribune becomes WGNX......and less religious was slated to become the new WB in January 1995 but on Dec. 11, 1994 WAGA 5 becomes FOX, WGNX 46 gets CBS 1996 bought by Meredith Broadcasting.......becomes WGCL WGCL is now the largest market CBS station not owned by the network.

You forgot about 1977, when WHAE became WANX, whose calls meant "Atlanta IN Christ (X)". Tribune's purchase of the station in 1984 and change of calls to WGNX was both a nod to the station's new owners (WGN Chicago was Tribune's flagship) and its past history under CBN (the "NX" part). I think that a lot of the LeSEA Broadcasting/World Harvest Television stations still show a good amount of "secular" off-network reruns--as do affiliates of FamilyNet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeSEA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FamilyNet Pat Robertson aired old reruns on the CBN Cable Network (now ABC Family) Religious independent KNCL in St. Louis use to air Fox Kids for a while in the 90's along with a few classic shows. It was also a secondary affiliate for UPN but most of their shows were not aired. The station was actually "KNLC". The station got the Fox Kids affiliation, as KTVI did not want the affiliation (like the other New World stations), and the only other indy in town at the time, KPLR, was about to pick up The WB. However, as station owner Larry Rice refused to show any local ads during the block, he filled them instead with religious messages, especially those featuring subjects that kids should not hear, like abortion. Fox then thought that giving Fox Kids to a right-wing Christian station was a bad idea, so he talked KTVI into picking it up in 1996. KNLC's relationship with UPN was also disastrous, as Reverend Rice refused to clear most of its programming, as he felt those shows were offensive. In 1998, KPLR picked up UPN as a secondary to The WB, but it was not until WRBU signed on in 2002 that St. Louis got their own UPN outlet. As brought up in my previous thread, KJNP (North Pole/Fairbanks) used to air INN News before KTVF picked it up. KYFC 50 in Kansas City aired reruns of Little House on the Prairie and the Flintstones When Pat Robertson owned TV stations, he aired family friendly programming on it, but nothing with ghosts (no Casper) Unless you're thinking of later, in the '70s Ted Turner had "Leave It To Beaver" (one of his personal favorites), "The Munsters," and "The Addams Family." Ch. 46 did have "The Dick Van Dyke Show" after it ran its course on 11 Alive, and even though I normally wouldn't have touched 46 with the proverbial ten-foot pole, I never went to bed until I watched "Best Of Groucho" and "The Honeymooners" from 11 PM-12 M. Pat Robertson did add more secular programs on all his stations, including a Saturdayafternoon block of Westerns such as "Bonanza" and "Big Valley." Then there were a few, which come up frequently in my retros, such as Ch. 14 in Hickory, NC, and Ch. 61 in Chattanooga, which weren't sure what they were, airing not only religious programs but movies, cartoons, and really old stuff like "Peter Gunn." One of the LeSea stations was WHFT 45 in Miami, before TBN purchased it. It ran from around 1975-79. cd KPAZ-TV channel 21 in Phoenix aired a mix of secular and sacred programming between 1970 and

1977. It was owned by a local church at the time. By 1977, the station was in deep debt, and Paul Crouch came in and bought it, making it his first station outside of KTBN. Pat Robertson aired old reruns on the CBN Cable Network (now ABC Family) Back in the early '80s, I stayed up late many a night watching CBN's "secular" venue, encore offerings like The Jack Benny Program, Burns & Allen, Wendy & Me, You Bet Your Life, Bachelor Father, I Married Joan, and many others. I think I recall them airing episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis as well. Even to this day LeSea's TV outlets continue to air both christian and secular programs, especially out here in Hawaii at KWHE, which has continued to do so since they signed on in 1986. For a time in the 80's or 90's, LeSea also produced the Indiana high school basketball finals. Someone mentioned CBN's old sitcoms; for a while during their days as The Family Channel, they even ran "Carson's Comedy Classics". 27 WYAH Norfolk/Portsmouth/Newport News from 1972 on was more a conventional independent station than religious. Weekdays and Saturdays they carried mostly secular shows...in fact they carried less religious shows than many secular owned independents. Only Sundays were they all religious and even that changed in 1980 when on Sundays that September they were secular noon to 3 OM by October of 80 they were secular 1030 AM to 330 PM; By 1981 they were secular 1030 AM to 7 PM which was as much as many secular indies. Also the other CBN stations were like this. 46 WANX was secular most of their broadcast day from about 1974 on in Atlanta. 39 KXTX was also secular by the late 70's 630 to 9 AM; Noon to 10 PM; and 1130 to 2 AM weekdays; secular all day Saturday and all religious Sunday till 1980 ehen they too were secular 1030 to 8 PM. In Boston 25 WXNE initially signed on at 10 AM and was religious about half the day weekdays, a couple hours Saturdays, and all religious Sunday. Their schedule of secular shows was very weak initially but gradually as better shows fell off other stations, WXNE picked them up. By 1982, WXNE was secular 630 to 9 AM; Noon to 10 PM; and 1030 PM to 2 AM. Saturdays they were secular all day and Sundays Secular from 1030 to 7 PM. By 1985 they even ended religious shows 8 AM sundays and returned to religious at 8 PM. So I would not count CBN stations as religious formats. They were actually general entertainment independents. CBN Cable was a religious general entertainment hybrid. They were all Christian till late in 1981. At that point they were Christian 5 to 7 AM; 9 AM to Noon; 3 to 4 PM; 9 to 11 PM; 2 to 4 AM. They clearly had more religion than their broadcast stations in the early 80's. Sunday they were religious till 11 AM and back to religion at 7 PM. Their entertainment shows were health related, educational kids shows, westerns, and very old sitcoms that fell off local broadcast stations in syndication in most cases by 1970. Anything newer than the early 60's was primary family drama shows focusing on pets like Lassie and Flipper and Gentle Ben and Fury. They also carried game show reruns at some point as well in the early to late 80's. In the late 80's they cut back religious shows and added some cartoons that were not in syndication and more family drama shows and pulled back on very old sitcoms and even westerns. Actually from about 1973 to 1977, WYAH TV 27 had Casper. But they never had Bewitched or Jeannie though. Ironically today, KTV which is a Christian TV Network for kids has secular cartoons several hours a day and has Casper under the title Harveytoons. They run edited episodes of Casper and others under that banner. They do not run the Casper The Friendly Ghost theme song but the instrumental openings on all the casper cartoons.

The Family Channel didn't air any religious programming besides The 700 Club I know that was the case when they became Fox Family (and later, of course, ABC Family). Didn't Pat Robertson only agree to sell to Fox on the condition that they carry "The 700 Club"? Religious WTLW/44 Lima OH carries secular programming, and is BIG into local high school sports. WPCB-40, Greensburg-Pittsburgh, has had its share of non-religious programming. Even some of its productions draw secular viewers. "At Home's" Arlene Williams had among its fans Robert Bianco, now of USA Today, who told readers in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1994 that he worships Williams. "All right, 'worships' may not be quite the word when dealing with Christian TV," he went on, "but you get the idea. Mr. TV (a Bianco PG alter-ego) loves Williams' down-home approach." "At Home" still can be seen regularly on Channel 40. On weekends syndicated fare with such hosts as Babe Winkerman and P. Allen Smith is regularly plugged in amid religious programs. Yes Family Channel when sold to Fox and again to Disney/ABC had to keep triple runs of 700 Club. Now about 61 WRIP/WDSI - Technically they were not a religious station. They were technically a low budget independent. They started out with an ambitious Movie format but when financially failing in 1973 they were sold to an owner that needed to turn a profit so they opted to offer blocks of time for sale so they sold the time to anyone that could buy it. It just happened to be religious groups that bought most of the time. By 1979 WRIP TV was selling all but an hour a day to outside sources, nearly all religious. Their secualr shows were ultra low budget. Finally in September of 1981, WRIP began adding several hours a day of barter shows and a few low priced syndicated shows. They went from an hour a day of secular shows to 3 hours a day of them. By early 1982 they were up to 6 hours a day of entertainment as they acquired movies, more sitcoms, and some drama shows. By the SUmmer of 1982 they ran about 10 hours a day of entertainment and 10 hours a day of bought time which was still nearly all religion. Then the station was sold in january of 1983 and renamed WDSI and went to about 15 hours of entertainment and 6 hours a day of religion. By 1985 they were down to only a couple hours a day of religion and by 1986 all but a couple hours a day of religion was gone. WDSI wound up a typical Fox affiliate which they are today. WPCB 40 Pittsburgh ran hardly any secular shows. If they did so it had to have been before 1983 maybe. Now in Greenville SC, 16 WGGS had secular shows about 5 hours a day with religion occupying 10 hours a day. By 1980 when WGGS was 24 hours they ran religion till 7 AM, secular 7-830 AM; religion 830 AM to 1 PM, Secular 1-7 PM, and religion the rest of the night. From 1982 to 1986 the secular shows gradually fell off the schedule and by 1987 WGGS was religious all but one hour a day. They remained like this until 1990 when they picked up an hour of cartoons a day from 2-4 PM; By 1993, WGGS was secular 3 to 6 PM weekdays with a syndicated Disney cartoon (that was no longer part of Disney Afternoon), some syndicated barter Hanna Barbara cartoons, Wonder Years, Gilligan's Island, and Ozzie & harriet. Then as Channel 40 WFBC seperated from WLOS in 1996 and 62 WASV came on as a UPN/WB independent in 1997, WGGS moved back to a nearly all Christian format by 1999. Their DT-2 runs Secualr shows about 1/3 of the time, mostly public domain stuff. Carolina Christian's sister stations in Columbia SC and Myrtle Beach ran Secualr shows a third of the time. WCCT 57 was sold to a secular owner in 1987 and became a Fox Independent station.

WGSE Myrtle Beach remained 1/3 secular and 2/3 Christian until 1990, when they went nearly all secular under Carolina Christian TV. In 1990 they ran Niteline at 5 AM, 700 Club at 6,a nd then Secular shows all day till 10 PM when they ran Niteline and then at 11 PM back to secular shows again. The secular shows by 1991 were all barter including cartoons, some sitcoms, some game shows, court shows, and talk shows. WGSE became a WB affiliated indie in 1995 and in 1998 they were sold to a secular owner and are now a Fox affiliate. It seemed wierd that in 1990 Carolina Christian had a nearly all Christian station in Greenville SC while in Myrtle Beach had a nearly all secular station. These stations were polar opposites of each other. Carolina Christian also launched another station in Columbia SC in 1996 which took both UPN and WB programming, and barter syndicated shows. That station was religious about 5 hours a day. They too have since been sold and I believe they are a CW station today. Is it true that when Pat Robertson sold The Family Channel to Fox, "The 700 Club" had to remain on the schedule, and that that condition also applied when Fox sold the channel to ABC? Is it not also true that a lot of advertisers avoid ABC Family simply because "The 700 Club" is there? Somebody straighten me out on this. As for WGGS I was gone from Greenville by 1996 and don't remember the changeover to a better mix of secular/religious programs. I remember in the '80s it was virtually all religious; I remember Peggy Denny's talk show and "Beverly Exercise," but that's about it as far as secular programming. WRIP/WDSI, OTOH, seemed to be a station in search of an identity before becoming a Fox affiliate. My Atlanta retros from the '70s are illustrative of exactly what you are saying: a station that morphed from virtually all movies (the same three or four repeated throughout the day) to virtually all religion. Ch. 61 was taken out of the Atlanta edition of TV Guide for a time in the early '80s although it was listed after it joined Fox. WHKY also had some really old stuff when it first went on in 1968; I remember "It's A Great Life" (originally aired on NBC, 1954-56) and "My Hero" (Bob Cummings' first sitcom, from '52) as staples on that station at the time. WGGS is a sister station to WATC 57 in Atlanta. Looking at their schedule (16.2) appears to be somewhat better than 57.2. WGGS is getting more programs from Luken's My Family TV while 57 is not (because 32.6 has them now). http://www.wggs16.com/162schedule.php Yes the sale of Fox Family Channel to ABC continued to have a manditory running of teh 700 club 3 times a day. WGGS evolved to a nearly all Christian lineup by 1986. Still the secualr shows they ran weekdays were New Zoo Revue, Beverly Exercise, and Peggy Denny. In 1988 they added Dricks Follies weekdays which was a mix of public domain cartoons and film shorts for 30 minutes a day. In 1992 they added Ducktales running 2 hours a day spread out of secualr shows. In 1993, they added Scooby Doo, Yogi and Friends, Flintstones, and Jetsons to the lineup. They also added Wonder years and Ozzie & Harriet in the 5 PM slot. So they were running 3 hours of secular shows plus Beverly Exercise & Peggy Denny earlier in the day. In 1996, they backed away again and was down to 2 hours a day of secular shows when the cartoons went to WFBC 40. By 1998, WGGS was back to a nearly all Christian format. They ran about 7 hours a day of secular shows Saturday morning from 7 AM to about 2 PM. These consisted of wildlife shows, hunting shows, sporting shows, fishing shows, and other outdoor type programming. They moved away from that in the alte 90's. TV Shows that did nothing more than fill time on the schedule-50's to the 70's..

The forgotten shows thread made me think of shows from the 1950's to the 1970's that were mainly (though not all) free of charge that sometimes more than one station would air in a market..That basically filled out a program slot..Anywhere from 5-30 minutes in length..Some I can think of.. The Big Picture-Army promotional films http://www.armypictorialcenter.com/the_big_picture.htm Many of these are on YouTube and the Internet Archive.. Industry On Parade Christophers Les Paul and Mary Ford (sponsored) Ohio Story-Based on a radio series of the same name-Actor Nelson Olmstead narrated 10 minute films that appeared on TV all over Ohio in the 50's..Sponsored by Ohio Bell Telephone Co. I'm sure there are others I am not as aware of, especially regionally.. ...considering the circumstances under which it was produced, I'd have to say Dr. Simon Locke/Police Surgeon qualifies here. It was produced from 1971 to 1974 strictly to satisfy Canadian Content regulations in Canada, and distributed in the United States to satisfy Prime Time Access regulations here. Thus, it pretty much served the same practical purpose that The Big Picture did in the '50s. The series, even though it was produced for three consecutive seasons, was so wretchedly made that co-star Jack Albertson quit during the first season and the series has been rarely rerun since those first runs on CTV and in Stateside syndication. It was, however, mercilessly lampooned in the theatrical movie TunnelVision (as "Police Comic"), and I recall Second City TV (in their pre-NBC days) taking some occasional swipes at it, too... Does Dan Smoot count? (15 min.) ...not according to Harlan Ellison, who considered Smoot so howlingly funny that he recommended The Dan Smoot Report as a comedy in his Los Angeles Free Press Glass Teat columns... I remember "Police Surgeon" - its entry in the "Prime Time TV Shows" index stated that Albertson complained about the show's tiny budget - he had to change costumes behind a bush during a location shoot because they couldn't spring for a trailer or dressing rooms. No doubt that led to his quitting. SCTV's "McKenzie Brothers" sketches were also a jab at the "Canadian content" laws. I certainly recall the "Big Picture" and other fillers TV stations ran in odd hours on weekends. When I was a kid and my dad was in the Air Force, he was stationed in the Philippines and Mom and I were there too. We got to watch plenty of AFRTS, which would run odd little interstitial films in place of the commercials that originally interrupted the US programs they broadcast. The only one I recall was a 3 minute film of a golfball rolling from one locale to another, accompanied by "Holiday for Strings." The fillers I recall (running between 5 and 15 minutes) are the ones that entertained me: MOVIE MUSEUM, THE AIR FORCE STORY, LEARN TO DRAW (actually something of an infomercial for Jon Gnagy), SOCIAL SECURITY IN ACTION, YESTERDAY'S NEWSREEL, ALMANAC, GREATEST HEADLINES OF THE CENTURY, FUNNY MANNS, TELESPORTS DIGEST. And I'd love to track down a print of a "safe driving" filler (there may have been more than one) which used weather-map style cartoon graphics (with ominous music) to depict a traffic accident, whereupon the narrator intoned "This accident should NOT have happened. Why DID it happen?" Back at least through the early-1980s, WTOG in Tampa Bay would run a filler feature after a movie if it runs short. Sometimes it was the aforementioned "Yesterday's Newsreel", but sometimes it's a general short film in general.

Dating myself here.... Does anybody remember watching "Milestones of the Century"? (Copyright MCMLX, but they were newsreels going back to the turn of the century.) That was my first encounter with the Pathe rooster. Looking at old schedules, WCKT set aside 15 minutes after the news, but I believe they were three 5-minute clips. I have seen it on eBay....that would make an interesting watch again. cd "The Dayton Allen Show," a five-minute comedy feature with one of the members of Steve Allen's (no relation) gang in the '50s. On some of my Kentucky retros from the early '60s you may have noted that WFIE Evansville, IN, carried this show twice a day, at the 8:25 AM break on the "Today" show and between 5:30 and 6 PM. Good responses thus far-While Police Surgron/Dr. Simon Locke..could have been thought of as a "time filler"..For the thread purposes, this show was meant to be a regular series and have some success.. Another show I've mentioned before is "Kiplinger's Changing Times" Usually aired in the 15 minutes before "Dugout Interviews" and Cleveland Indians Baseball in the early 70's.. ...in which case, it should have been made in a somewhat professional manner. At best, its production values just barely surpassed the average cable access production of the '80s ;-) ... ...also admittedly not intended as a time-filler, but in this instance obviously used as one, was Mr. Magoo. In 1971-72, KFIZ-TV/34 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, usually ran an American International movie of some sort from 8:00 or 8:30 to 10:00 weeknights, but had to wait until about 10:15 to pick up WVTV/18 Milwaukee's one-night tape delay of the CBS version of The Merv Griffin Show. Instead of a rip-and-read newscast or such, KFIZ decided to run a couple of Mr. Magoo cartoons at 10:00, well past most kids' bedtime in that pre-VHS era; most nights, KFIZ's cartoons caused it to pick up Griffin from WVTV in mid-opening titles at the earliest, if not in mid-opening monologue. Certainly, if Yesterday's Newsreel and Milestones of the Century, which were re-programmed copies of material originally produced with first-run intentions, qualify for this thread, so does this use of Mr. Magoo Grin ... If I recall, they were hosted by a bespectacled guy named Doug Prager (or something similar). He also did half-hour infomercials promoting Changing Times magazine (now called Kiplinger's Personal Finance) in which he dispensed consumer tips. There were also infomercials for the Shop Smith. Another filler I recall is "Beltsville Newsreel," produced by the USDA. Way before my time there were the Snader Telescriptions, perhaps the first music videos. If I recall, they were hosted by a bespectacled guy named Doug Prager (or something similar). He also did half-hour infomercials promoting Changing Times magazine (now called Kiplinger's Personal Finance) in which he dispensed consumer tips. There were also infomercials for the Shop Smith. Another filler I recall is "Beltsville Newsreel," produced by the USDA. Way before my time there were the Snader Telescriptions, perhaps the first music videos. In Boston, during the 1970s, WCVB Ch. 5 use to run newsreel stories around 4:45 am to fill in 15 minutes of programming (At least I think it was around 4:45 am).

Smoot was one of many mostly right-wing commentators that had 5 to 15 minute shows on early local LA television - another was "Dr. Harold Fishman," who later became George Putnam's sidekick, then the beloved multi-decade news anchor at KTLA. What about music video shows? I remember one from the mid 80's called "Flip Side" which only seemed to consist of about 2 videos, "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock and a stiff by Ronnie Milsap, "She Loves My Car". There's another one I remember from the early 70's called "The Fritos Sports Club", hosted by longtime NBC play-by-play guy Charlie Jones. This was a 5 minute filler that ran early mornings, usually. KABC - 7 for years ran a morning program called "The Daily Word". It came from a religious organization called Unity, out of Missouri. I think Unity still exists. Not to be confused with the Universalist/Unitarian church. This is from the Unity Church, based in the small town of Unity Village, Missouri, near Kansas City. The church is more known for its "The Word From Unity" public service announcements, where celebrities talk about a particular word and what it means to daily life. A few of those have surfaced on YouTube. At both sign-on and sign-off, KNXT -2 (now KCBS) ran mini-sermons on scratchy black and white film called Give Us This Day. They were brief speakings by pastors from throughout Southern California. WCBS in New York also ran "Give Us This Day", which featured taped sermonettes by religious figures in the NYC area, as well as from other CBS O&Os (an example on YouTube featured WCBS showing a sermonette from a pastor in Los Angeles, no doubt have been taped at KNXT/KCBS. That being said, many TV stations through the 1980s have shown sermonettes at sign on and/or sign off, featuring local material, material from other sources (including inspirational PSAs), or both. In Tampa Bay, WLCY/WTSP ran "The Pastor's Study" at sign off, though the couple of times I saw this in the early-1980s, it was nothing more than Michael Guido's "A Seed From The Sower" PSAs, with an opening and closing to "The Pastor's Study" added. The Guido PSAs were nothing special, as they also appeared at random during station breaks on WCLF, the local Christian station. We had lots of "fillers" at our AFRTS station in Germany, but we didn't use them all that much. One I recall seeing in the library rack was something called "R-O-F", meaning, "Records on Film." It was a various pop groups, doing songs of theirs, that were mostly stiffs. One thing we'd do from time to time, was pick a movie from the library, just because it was the right length to fill a space.The only movie I recall that we used this way was 1942's "Canal Zone", with Forrest Tucker, Lloyd Bridges and Hugh Beaumont. There were several programs, particularly in the 70s, that were meant as filler programs to satisfy Canadian Content regulations. One such program was The Trouble with Tracy. Toronto's CFTO used to show various short films from their library just before 6:00am to fill time before the repeat of the previous night's Night Beat News. One from 1991 that I saw on Youtube was a mid-70s film about Toronto's Ontario Place; they didn't even play the whole film, starting the news right in the middle. To this day, or at least as recently as two years ago, CTV was still airing filler just before 6:00am. As I recall the video shown every day was related to World War II and was always saddening to watch.

There were several programs, particularly in the 70s, that were meant as filler programs to satisfy Canadian Content regulations. One such program was The Trouble with Tracy. With about 130 episodes produced in a single season and being known for its sub-par quality (like "Dr. Simon Locke" / "Police Surgeon", also from CTV), "Tracy" was the perfect cancon filler used by many stations into the 1980s, just something that would score brownie points with the CRTC. To this day, or at least as recently as two years ago, CTV was still airing filler just before 6:00am. As I recall the video shown every day was related to World War II and was always saddening to watch. Apparently, it's filler to pad out the time between the last infomercial and the 6AM program, due to the irregular times for its 11:30PM news and its late-night talk shows. "With This Ring," produced at WJBK Detroit and featuring a minister who talked about marriage and family issues, was a weekend staple in many markets, usually airing either before sign-off on Saturday or Sunday nights, or around sign-on Saturday or (more likely) Sunday mornings. It was a 15-minute program. Also, all Storer (WJBK, WSBK...et.al.) stations and a lot of predominantly religious stations ran both "With This Ring" and "Worship For Shut Ins" for many years. I know that WHCT/18 in Hartford (during the Dr. Gene days) ran both shows. The only secular program on WHCT back in the late 70's was "WCT World Cup Tennis" complete with commercials EXCEPT those for Lowenbrau Beer. Apparently, the other Hartford area stations passed on WCT World Cup Tennis and gave it to WHCT free, as long as they ran the spots. Since WHCT is mainly religious, they were able to opt out the Lowenbrau spots. "Back in the day" WFIL-6 Philadelphia would have Sunday filler like The Living Word, produced by the Salvation Army, and Aeronautics and Space Report, produced by NASA. ixnay Another religious program that I remember WAGA pairing with "The Living Word" was "The Sacred Heart," which, despite a long run in syndication, I never saw. I think it was produced by an arm of the Catholic Church. Anyway, these two programs aired back-to-back in Atlanta early Sunday mornings. Oddly, WBMG (WIAT) Birmingham had a local program called "The Living Word," not related to the syndicated program but produced by one of the local churches. It was a half-hour late Sunday nights. But then again, WTVT Tampa had a public-affairs program on weekends called "Insight," which had nothing to do with Father Ellwood Kieser (sp?). I guess the first thing that comes to mind is "TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes" and all of the other low-budget clip shows that have ever been thrown up there by a network in a time slot they knew they were going to lose anyhow. Which stations carried Liberace and Florian ZaBach in the 1950s? ...two of the earliest successes in television syndication were music programs starring Liberace, the flamboyant pianist, and Florian ZaBach, who was promoted by some stations as "The Violin Successor to Liberace" (NBC affiliate WMBV/11 Marinette advertised Zabach as such in the

Wisconsin edition of TV Guide while carrying both shows during the 1954-55 season). In the Christmas Week 1954 Wisconsin edition, TV Guide lists WMBV as carrying Liberace at 5:30 PM Saturday (Christmas Day) and 8:30 PM Wednesday (pre-empting the second half of Kraft Television Theater) and ZaBach at 6:30 Sunday (pre-empting Mr. Peepers); curiously, CBS affiliate WBAY-TV/2 Green Bay, in the same market as WMBV, also carried Liberace at 9:00 PM Sunday, pre-empting Father Knows Best. I'm guessing Guild Films didn't distribute Liberace on an exclusive basis that season. In Liberace's home town of Milwaukee, his program was carried by WTMJ-TV/4 on Fridays at 8:00 PM, while in Madison it was seen over WKOW-TV/27 Fridays at 8:30 (preempting Our Miss Brooks from CBS)... ...from searching other posts in this section, I've found thae following stations airing the programs: Liberace Cleveland: WEWS/5, 9:00 PM Wednesdays (pre-empting Masquerade Party from ABC, I believe) Akron: WAKR-TV/49, 8:30 PM Tuesdays (pre-empting Twenty Questions from ABC) Sioux Falls, South Dakota: KELO-TV/11, 9:30 PM Mondays Yuma, Arizona: KIVA-TV/11, 9:00 PM Tuesdays Phoenix: KPHO-TV/5, 7:30 PM Tuesdays Sioux City, Iowa: KVTV/9, 8:30 Tuesdays (pre-empting See It Now from CBS) Chicago: WGN-TV/9, 9:30 PM Wednesdays The Florian ZaBach Show Binghamton, New York: WINR/40 Manchester, New Hampshire: WMUR-TV/9 Cleveland: WEWS/5 Tampa-St. Petersburg: WSUN-TV/38 Vancouver, British Columbia: CBUT/2 (did CBC carry Liberace and/or ZaBach nationally in Canada?) New York City: WPIX-TV/11 Lexington, Kentucky: WLEX-TV/18 ...What other stations carried Liberace and/or ZaBach, and if the station was a network affiliate airing them in prime time, what were the network programs they pre-empted in those markets?... Two more for LiberaceWBZ Boston WJAR Providence (on Saturday nights) Don't ever remember seeing Florian ZaBach in Rochester, NY...but WHEC-TV did carry Liberace in various dayparts (sometimes daytime, sometimes early evening before the network feeds in what we now call "prime access"--IIRC 7 PM, where the station now does a local newscast after Brian Williams wraps NBC Nightly News). wcov tv montgomery carried it was it a abc tv show ...Liberace did have a daytime show on ABC in the late '50s (I have a Who Do You Trust? program on DVD on which Ed McMahon promos that show), but I'm specifically asking about the Guild Films syndicated show of 1952-55. However, that does bring up another question: was the Guild Films version rerun as part of the ABC daytime show?... Classic Saturday Morning Cartoons/shows that were preempted/delayed in your area This has been alluded to in previous threads, but what classic Saturday morning cartoons and other children's shows were preempted in your market throughout TV history?

A few cases from the two markets I grew up in/near (Peoria, IL and Quad Cities IA/IL): --In Peoria during at least the late 80s until when NBC ended Saturday toons in 1992, NBC affiliate WEEK-25 either completely bumped or tape-delayed the network children's shows that aired during the 11AM CT hour. Sometimes one of the shows was tape-delayed to 6:30 AM the following Saturday--I remember distinctly that the 1987-88 kids' game show "I'm Telling" was among those (during the season that NBC used the casts of shows like "Valerie's Family," "Facts of Life," "Family Ties," "Cosby Show," etc. to introduce shows and commercial breaks--so in Peoria you saw the end of the previous week's cast intros before the rest of the Saturday NBC toon schedule began). Instead, WEEK opted for syndicated shows in that slot like "Puttin' on the Hits," "Remote Control" (when it was syndicated circa 1989-90), "RollerGames," "Not Just News," and maybe infomercials. And in checking a classic western Illinois TV schedule from June 1984 that was posted on this board a few years ago, the NBC showing of "Flintstone Funnies" at 7AM CT Saturdays was bumped by WEEK in favor of "Uncle Waldo." --In the Quad Cities, WQAD-8 was among the ABC stations that bailed out on "Bugs Bunny and Tweety" during the mid-90s, opting instead for shows like "Gladiators 2000" during that hour. And in the summer of 1984, WQAD bumped "Scooby and Scrappy Doo" for "Jackson 5ive" when the latter returned to syndication on the heels of Michael's "Thiller" album and the Jacksons' reunion tour that summer. In addition, another (former) Illinois ABC affiliate, WAND-17 Decatur (NBC since Labor Day 2005) also cast aside part of the "Elmer Fudd and Puddy Tat Show" Cheesy Grin for "Bill Nye the Science Guy" around 1994. I also recall seeing a Springfield State Journal-Register TV listing from October 1982 that showed KHQA-7 (CBS) in Quincy bumping the short-lived CBS cartoon "Meatballs and Spaghetti" (anyone remember that one) one Saturday for either a public affairs or religious show (but this may need more confirmation and I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to check this further at my public library). By the way, here's the intro to the forementioned forgotten "classic" that may have gone unseen in the Tri-States (IL, MO, IA) at least one week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSKwP5p7qeU What 'toons have fallen victim to preemptions in your markets? IIRC, here's a case of just the opposite thing happening. The Western/comedy music group, "Riders In The Sky" had a short-lived (199192) CBS Saturday morning program that was pre-empted on Hartford's channel 3, WFSB for the (IMHO, awful) "Captain Planet and the Planeteers" cartoon show from TBS and DIC. --In Peoria during at least the late 80s until when NBC ended Saturday toons in 1992, NBC affiliate WEEK-25 either completely bumped or tape-delayed the network children's shows that aired during the 11AM CT hour. Sometimes one of the shows was tape-delayed to 6:30 AM the following Saturday--I remember distinctly that the 1987-88 kids' game show "I'm Telling" was among those... In Tampa Bay, WXFL / WFLA routinely bumped NBC's Saturday morning shows altogether after 12 Noon -- I never saw "I'm Telling" until reruns started to appear on The Family Channel. Slightly off-topic, WTVT bumped "Press Your Luck" locally for a syndicated game or talk show, at 10:30AM (when WTVT also didn't carry its predecessor at that tome, "Child's Play") or at 4PM (when they carried "Hour Magazine"). Ironically, when PYL moved to 4PM on CBS, WTVT did carry its replacement at that time -- "Card Sharks". It wasn't until reruns came to USA that I saw PYL.

I also recall seeing a Springfield State Journal-Register TV listing from October 1982 that showed KHQA-7 (CBS) in Quincy bumping the short-lived CBS cartoon "Meatballs and Spaghetti" (anyone remember that one) one Saturday for either a public affairs or religious show (but this may need more confirmation and I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to check this further at my public library). WTVT also bumped "Meatballs & Spaghetti" for something else when it first started, but began carrying the show later on at its time. Up the road from Peoria, Rockford's WTVO (back when they were NBC) would too bump-off the final hour of the network's Saturday lineup for syndicated product--one of them was Casey Kasem's America's Top 10, the other was either the Ebony-Jet Showcase (based off the magazines) or something else, dependent on the year. I had left Rockford for Los Angeles in 1988, but my grandmother would send TV Guides every so often, and if I remember right, just prior to WTVO's switch to ABC, they cleared the NBC Saturday morning lineup, which by 1992 was just Saturday Today and the TNBC shows--they gave a hour or two back to the affiliates. Rockford's two network affiliates, WREX and WIFR, virtually cleared their all of their respective networks' lineups. The network affiliates in near-by Madison and Milwaukee, with the exception of WISN, would normally take out a hour of the Saturday morning lineup for local and/or syndicated shows; for examples, WKOW in Madison didn't clear American Bandstand (a country music program aired instead), In Milwaukee, WITI didn't show CBS from 9:30-10:30am (Small Wonder and another program aired in its place), WTMJ didn't clear NBC from 10:30 to noon (bowling and other programming was instead offered). From the mid-70's well into the 90's WMC NBC 5 in Memphis pre-empted all NBC programming, whether it was cartoons or sports, from 11 AM to 12:30 PM on Saturdays for Memfus Rasslin', and they would come into Major League Baseball in progress. If there had been a major national disaster on a late Saturday morning WMC would probably carry rasslin' instead of the news bulletins. Roll Eyes Here in San Diego, KFMB usually carried all of the cartoons on Saturday Morning from the 1960s80s, but that was during the years when CBS's Pacific Time Zone feed aired the shows with the Eastern Time Zone pattern (8am-2pm). When CBS's Pacific Time Zone feed bumped the shows up one hour to follow the Central Time Zone pattern, KFMB, which was running public affairs programming from 7-8am from the 60s, ended up pre-empting the first hour of the CBS Saturday Morning block until I don't know when. The first hour was usually fare aimed at the youngest TV watchers (Muppet Babies, Strawberry Shortcake, etc.) The one known exception to KFMB's perfect Saturday Morning clearance, however, was during the year when CBS had Jeannie and My Favorite Martians, and KFMB opting to pre-empt them for Chester the Jester, a local kid show host, showing old Yogi Bear and Friends cartoons. XETV when it was an ABC affiliate pre-empted a half hour of toons around 9:30am in favor of "Tijuana, Window to the South". KGTV (KOGO-TV until 1972) bumped one hour of NBC's early Saturday Morning shows (I remember Heckle and Jeckle Hour moved to Sundays at 7am) in favor of Uncle Russ, a local kid show host. That was for about a year or two. KOGO in 1970 carried the daily reruns of The Flintstones, which at the time didn't include a dozen episodes in syndication because they were embargoed to air on NBC's Saturday Morning sked; oddly, KOGO pre-empted the NBC airings of Flintstones in favor of Kool McKool for reasons unexplained. When NBC had the Saturday Baseball Game of the week, KOGO/KGTV (through June 1977 when it was the last month it was an NBC station) pre-empted the 11am-NOON (hour 5) of the Saturday Morning sked, but the hour of toons returned once baseball season ended. KNBC 4 aired the fifth hour on Sunday mornings during the season.

When KCST (now KNSD) got the NBC affiliation KGTV discarded in favor of ABC, it ran the fifth hour of the Saturday morning toons Sunday mornings from 11am-NOON in 1977, but I can't recall if the practice continued after that year. KCST was clearing the Sunday morning ABC toons from 10 or 10:30-NOON. KGTV didn't carry the Sunday ABC toons from July 1977 onwards. KGTV did carry the 10:30-12:00 Sunday ABC lineup in Sep 1978 until ABC ended Sunday morning kids programming in c. 1982(?) XETV delayed several ABC Sunday toons to run weekdays at 8am or so around the second half of the 1960s, but quit carrying them altogether afterwards. CBS's Sunday morning lineup (all one hour of it) was carried by KFMB initially, but by the 1970s, never carried it again. Most of the toons were last year's toons rerun for the second or third year. CBS ran Tom and Jerry for many years, while ABC had Bullwinkle in its lineup until 1973. I guess "Mission: Magic" did so bad on ABC in 1973 that it didn't even make it to ABC's Sunday morning burnoff sked (reruns ran in syndication instead). Some schedule geeks may notice that the first hour of CBS, ABC, and NBC's Saturday morning schedules are shows at least a year old. I'm guessing that many affiliates bumped the first hour of it in favor of syndicated or public affairs programming. I am going a fur ways back, but WCKT 7 Miami, known for pre-empting a LOT of NBC shows, had this thing in the 60s of bumping late Saturday cartoons when the season started in September, usually around 11 am to 12:30 or whatever, to show what I guess were public affairs shows for kids & college-age folk. One was called "Youth and the Issue," and there may have been a University of Miami-approved roundtable show........Gradually the NBC 11am stuff would ease back over the spring/summer, then back to the public affairs stuff in the fall. Obviously based on the school year. (I remember being so happy seeing "Secret Squirrel" finally on WCKT one year. Anyway.....) I have been looking at the online newspaper archives, and seeing the NBC program "Exploring" (in the early 60s) definitely shown on WCKT. This was usually around 12:30pm-1:30pm on Saturdays. I was not even aware of the show, and wouldn't have bet money that it was an NBC show, apparently! I knew how WCKT dealt with NBC! cd KCTV also pre-empted some CBS Sat morning shows for Captain Planet (it wasn't the original Ninja Turles), they would eventually begin pre-empting more CBS Sat morning shows for news around the mid-90s. Why didn't they air Memfus Rasslin' in primetime if it was that important? The ABC station preempted the Miracle on Ice (itself on tape delay) for a church service WSB, WAGA, and (for two years, 1972-74) WXIA had noon newscasts on Saturdays. WSB would not come back to NBC at 12:30 (as an ABC affiliate they would carry only the second half of "American Bandstand" after a local public-affairs show at 12:30). 5 and 11, OTOH, usually did go back to their networks at 12:30, especially when "Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids" was on CBS and "American Bandstand" was on ABC. After a while, 5 began delaying everything from 11 AM on (they put what was then WWF wrestling at 11), and 11 (by now NBC) would carry "Star Trek" from 12-1. What took the cake in Atlanta was WSB's showing "The Bugs Bunny And Tweety Show" at 6 AM in order to carry "Star Search" at 11. And I think we all know about Dallas and WFAA's refusal to carry

"American Bandstand." This one is going back to my days as a kid where the memory might be faulty, but I do remember KVIQ channel 6 out of Eureka running Funky Phantom in the later part of the afternoon, like maybe 4 or 4:30. Thing is, I'm not sure if this was done every single week or if it just happened every so often, perhaps to make way for a ball game from either ABC or NBC earlier in the day. From the late 1970's thru the mid-1980s, KHQA/7 in Quincy, IL pre-empted whatever cartoon show CBS showed at Noon (Central) so they could air "U.S. Farm Report." Initially, unless there was a conflict with CBS Sports programming, KHQA would tape-delay the pre-empted show to 1PM. The tape-delay to 1PM became kind of sporadic later on (even when there wasn't a conflict with CBS Sports) until it was ditched altogether. I think it was in 1985 or '86, KHQA moved "U.S. Farm Report" to 6:30AM and began clearing CBS at noon. However, a few years later, "U.S. Farm Report" returned to Noon. At some point, CBS truncated its morning cartoon block so that it ended at Noon (Central), so it wasn't much of an issue, unless there was a sports conflict. Quote also recall seeing a Springfield State Journal-Register TV listing from October 1982 that showed KHQA-7 (CBS) in Quincy bumping the short-lived CBS cartoon "Meatballs and Spaghetti" (anyone remember that one) one Saturday for either a public affairs or religious show (but this may need more confirmation and I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to check this further at my public library). KHQA never regularly pre-empted "Meatballs & Spaghetti." I remember it being on (I never really watched it). According to "The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television," "Meatballs" aired on CBS at 10:30AM Central in the fall of 1982. However, CBS would occasionally have sports programming that started at noon or earlier. When that would happen, KHQA would air "U.S. Farm Report" early, right before the sports program. So if there was a CBS Sports program at 11, KHQA would have aired "U.S. Farm Report" at 10:30. I'm guessing that was the case in the particular set of listings you saw. That reminded me that when Memfus Rasslin' was on WHBQ 13 (At that time ABC) in the early 70's American Bandstand was pre-empted. I don't know what the hold was that rasslin' had on Memphis TV on Saturday mornings, other than falling in line with WMC's tendency toward preemptions in that period (anything that made more money), and it may have actually gotten better ratings than NBC's usual Saturday morning lineup. Now that you mentioned it, the Pacific Time Zone affiliates had some Saturday Morning shows bumped to later times after the live baseball or football games aired if they chose to carry them at all. Many Pacific network affiliates simply pre-empted the delayed Saturday Morning programming after the sports games in favor of local programming. What you may have seen is that ABC's Pacific affiliates aired Funky Phantom following one or two College Football games in the fall Example: If ABC ran a College Football at 10:30am Pacific Time, the shows that would have aired from 10:30am-12:30pm would air following the game on some ABC stations (KABC 7 carried them for one) from 2-4pm. NBC's Baseball Game of the Week aired at 11am to about 2:30pm, so NBC would feed the last hour (11am-NOON) of the Saturday Morning lineup after the game at 2:30 KFMB (CBS) never carried the delayed Saturday Morning toons after the sports games ended. KOGO (ABC, then NBC in 1977) also didn't carry them either. I don't recall XETV (ABC until 1973) carrying the delayed toons either, but I know that KCST (ABC 1973-1977) carried the delayed toons after the football games ended. 1976: Almost Anything Goes would air at 4pm, then Krofft Super Show at 4:30, then the Weekend Special at 5:30. In case more information is needed, if American Bandstand was pre-empted when sports started at 9:30 Pacific Time (AB aired at 12:30

Eastern), then AB is not available for Pacific stations either, and neither is ABC's Wide World of Sports if football aired from 12:30-4pm Pacific Time (WWoS aired at 5:30 Eastern) I can remember KGO in San Francisco delaying ABC's cartoons(and 'Bandstand') in the fall of '81, due to college football, airing anywhere from 2-5 PM. During the 1967-68 TV season here in Boston, the old WHDH-5 didn't clear the latter portion of the CBS Saturday morning cartoon schedule ("Superman/Aquaman" at 11:30 A.M. ET, "Jonny Quest" at 12:30 P,.M. ET, "The Beagles" at 1 P,.M. ET; and "Road Runner" at 1:30 P.M. ET). I believe that between them, WKBG-56 and/or WSBK-38 picked up these series. Due to outcry from overprotective moms with too much time on their hands, KREM-TV planned to pre-empt Garbage Pail Kids before CBS pulled the plug shortly ahead of the show's scheduled premiere. With what did they plan to pre-empt it with? From the mid-70's well into the 90's WMC NBC 5 in Memphis pre-empted all NBC programming, whether it was cartoons or sports, from 11 AM to 12:30 PM on Saturdays for Memfus Rasslin', and they would come into Major League Baseball in progress. If there had been a major national disaster on a late Saturday morning WMC would probably carry rasslin' instead of the news bulletins. Roll Eyes Why didn't they air Memfus Rasslin' in primetime if it was that important? it was LIVE and in studio...thats why from wiki Wrestling returned to Channel 5 in 1977, after some years on WHBQ-TV, and for many years the very popular live in-studio professional wrestling program was broadcast live on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Some of the wrestlers became regional celebrities from their exposure on the program, perhaps most notably Jerry "The King" Lawler, whose fame earned him his own locallyproduced TV sports show, seen on channel 5 on Sundays during the 1980s.[3] The wrestling show eventually became the last remaining program of its kind in the U.S., before its cancellation in the 1990s. Looking at some late 1960s TV schedules from the Toledo Blade, WWJ (WDIV) delayed "Super 6" until 1:00PM (12:00 in Detroit). in the late 1960s-early 1970s, Michigan did not go on daylight time and followed for the most part, the Central time pattern for Saturday Morning. in 1970, WWJ (WDIV) didn not clear the 8:00AM cartoon, but joined the network at 9:00AM and followed again the Central time pattern for saturday morning. in 1971, WWJ (WDIV) again pushed back the 8:00AM cartoon to 1:00PM (12:00PM in Detroit) and again aired the rest of the cartoons in the Central time pattern. it should be noted that WWJ(WDIV) was airing Oospy at 7:30AM(EST) and that always knocked out the 8:30AM(EDT) network show in summer. I'm surprised that no one mentioned "Pryor's Place," which WITI/Milwaukee decided not to carry. WTVT in Tampa also bumped "Pryor's Place" when it started, due to college football. They would later pick it up after the season ended. Here are the preemptions and delays I know of 1. Philadelphia - KYW TV ran the entire Saturday Morning NBC schedule until the early 1990's when they added a two hour newscast I believe in 1991. Then in 1992 at the launch of Saturday Today they had a 7 AM to Noon Newscast I believe, with Saturday Today inserted 7-9 AM. Then as

a CBS affiliate and then an O & O they ran News still 6-10 AM and CBS Cartoons 10 AM-1 PM Saturdays. The other two hours ran Sunday Morning 7-9 AM. So as a CBS O & O they had no preemptions 10 WCAU ran the entire Satiurday and Sunday morning lineups till the fall of 1976 when they preempted Sunday Morning's reruns of Far Out Space Nuts while still running Hudson Brothers and their own Gene London show. Prior to 1976 and until the fall of 1977 WCAU TV also delayed the 830-930 AM hour. They would run that hour of cartoons 7-8 AM and then ran CBS's 8 AM offering followed by Gene London at 830 or 9 AM. In the fall of 1977, they stopped running the Sunday Morning cartoons. They ran Marlo Movie Machine still which was syndicated Sundays. Saturdays they delayed the 8 AM hour running it at 7 AM a week behind followed by gene London at 8. In the fall of 1978, they ended Gene London, added a religious show called Credo at 7 AM Saturday mornings and Syndicated Marlo at 8 AM preempting 2 hours of CBS cartoons. In January of 79 they added half an hour of Sunday morning cartoons at 830-9 AM Saturdays still preempting 90 minutes of CBS cartoons. In the fall of 79 they moved Marlo to Sunday Morning and began Candy Apple News Company on Sundays as well. Saturdays they preempted the 8 AM hour for the hour of Sunday Morning cartoons. Finally in 1980 they began running the CBS Saturday Morning cartoons in their entirety and cleared the Sunday Morning hour once again. Channel 6 WPVI ran the Saturday Morning cartoons in their entirity until the fall of 1978. The Sunday they ran the 11 AM hour at 930 AM and the 1030 show in pattern with local show Al Alberts at 11 AM. In the fall of 1978 they preempted the 8 AM offering for Captian Noah 730-830 AM. They also ran Anmals Animals Animals Saturday mornings at 630. Sundays they ran only an hour of Kids Are People Too and Captain Noah at 1030 followed by Al Alberts at 11 AM. Beginning in 1980 They ran 30 minutes of Kids Are people at 930 Sunday and Captain Noah 10-11 AM with Kids Are People inserted within Captian Noah. In 1981 they changed things again when ABC ended Sunday Morning Kids Shows. They now cut Captian Noah to just Saturday Mornings at 7:30 to 8 AM, moved Al Alberts to Saturday at 11 AM, and ran the 11 AM hour at 6 AM. They aould sometimes preempt the ABC 11 AM offering other times the noon offering. Eventually as an O & O they ran the 11 AM-Noon slot at 6 AM, Chief Halftown at 7, Captian Noah at 730, and public affairs shows at 11 AM to Noon. They began in pattern clearences in 1995. 2. Washington DC - 9 WTOP-TV/WDVM/WUSA - ran all but one hour of CBS Saturday cartoons but no Sunday morning ones ever. They began running the entire Saturday lineup in the 90's - 7 WJLA ran the SUnday Morning stuff early Satruday mornings a week behind. Pittsburgh - too many preemptions in the 70's to keep track of - Beginning in 1990 11 WPXI dumped the entire NBC Saturday cartoons for a Newscast going 8 AM to 1230 PM. Preempted shows for a while went to WPTT until NBC ended Saturday Cartoons in 1992. They continued preempting Saturday Today as well until the late 90's. Today they run the NBC Saturday Lineup in its entirity accomodating 3 hours of local news somewhere. WTAE basically ran the entire Saturday Morning cartoons but never ran any Sunday Morning cartoons throughout the 70's and 80's. Then in June of 1992, WTAE dumped the entire ABC Saturday cartoon lineup for a NEwscast matching Channel 11's 8-1230 Newscast. In 1994 they added Weekend Special at 1230 and an hour of Saturday Cartoons at 6 AM Saturday mornings and an hour at 7 AM Sunday Mornings. In 1997, they changed the newscast to 6-10 AM with ABC's One Saturday Morning cartoons from 10 to Noon and back to news at Noon. Sundays they ran another hour of cartoons at 8 AM. Orlando - 2 WESH ran every NBC cartoon until they stopped offering cartoons in 1992. 6 WDBO/WCPX ran the entire CBS Saturday Morning lineup with an occasional exception but no Sunday morning cartoons. 9 WFTV ran the ENtire ABC Saturday and Sunday Morning Cartoon lineups till ABC ended Sunday Cartoons and kids shows. Then they ran the entire Saturday cartoon lineups until 1991 when they began a 7-9 AM newscast. At that point they began preempting the 8 AM hour. Then when News expanded to 7-10 AM in 1992, they began preempting 2 hours of the

Saturday lineup. Then in 1994, they stopped running the rest of the ABC cartoons running news 710, educational kids 10-noon, news at noon. Then in 1996, they began running an hour of cartoons 11 AM to Noon Saturday and 7-8 AM Sunday. In 1998, They began running ABC's One Saturday Morning 10 to Noon and another hour Sunday mornings. Eventually they began clearing all the kids shows once they were cut back to 4 hours and then 3 hours. I don't know why I forgot this one, but for years WREG CBS 3 has carried Knowledge Bowl, a high school quiz show during the school year, and it would pre-empt something from the CBS schedule that varied over the years. It's still on, but now it's during the time that would be part of the Saturday news on CBS now. This is why today the big 4(ABC ,CBS ,Fox & NBC) don't have Saturday Morning Cartoons(even though CW has cartoons. Actually CBS and NBC (actually yes they brought them back a few years back) both are running 3 hours a week of cartoons but all are falling under the EI classification. Also hardly any kids advertising airs on these blocks. About Disney and their not advertising junk food on kids shows...ABC is not affected anyway being ABC Saturday morning kids shows are pure EI product and accept no ads anyway. Disney Channel had no commercials at all. They have commercial breaks but these breaks contain promotions about Disney Channel programming. But Disney continues to not accept ads anyway. Only the Disney XP Channel which focuses on cartoons and other action type shows has commercials. ABC Family also no longer has cartoons or shows for kids only anymore either. Local Television Anniversary Specials Earlier Friday night, WBKO 13 (formerly WLTV) in Bowling Green, KY aired their 50th anniversary special and you can go to http://www.wbko.com/ and view the anniversary special. Don't forget to check out part two, because it has some rare clips as well as some news opens. This makes me wonder if any local television stations did include news opens during their anniversary special. None of the TV stations in the designated market area of Mobile, Alabama-Pensacola, Florida had special anniversary programs around their 50th anniversaries (WALA-TV in 2003, WEAR-TV in 2004, and WKRG-TV in 2005). Even though WKRG-TV had interviews with former employees during their local 9:00 AM newscasts at the time (they no longer schedule newscasts for 9:00 AM), there was never a special program dedicated entirely to the history of the station. In San Francisco, KTVU(actually in Oakland) did a 30th anniversary special in 1988, hosted by comedian and local native Ronnie Schell(best known as Duke from 'Gomer Pyle', and as a TV and radio commercial actor). It was a two-hour show, with plenty of flashbacks to the station's local programming, such as 'Roller Derby', numerous kids' shows (search for 'Charley and Humphrey', 'Bits and Pieces' or 'Captain Cosmic' on YouTube), a nighttime variety show hosted by legendary KSFO disc jockey Don Sherwood, and, of course, KTVU's 'Ten O'Clock News', which claims to have been the first newscast in that time slot anywhere outside the Midwest. The station had an ad campaign for its 50th anniversary, but confined most of that observance to its web site. KGO marked 40 years on the air in 1989, with a two-hour special of its own, featuring, among othrs, Jack Lalanne, whose first TV show was on channel 7, before he went national. The station also invited a number of its previous news anchors for a retrospective that filled the last half hour of the 6 o'clock newscast on May 5, the actual anniversary date. Roger Grimsby, KGO's anchor in the mid-60s, made an appearence, just days after his final newscast for WABC in New York. His sucessor,Van Amburg, however, did not appear, or even send a congratulatory message, still bitter

over being fired in '86. Don't recall KRON or KPIX doing anything for their anniversaries, though channel 5 occasionally mentioned their early days with new retrospectives, especially when longtime anchor Dave McElhatton retired in 2000. In Raleigh-Durham, WTVD/Durham, the area's longest running TV operation did a nice 30 minute special for their 30th aniversary in 1984, but the 50th was marked with a mention on the newscast and an invitation for viewers to post remembrances on their website. The '84 special is on Youtube. At WRAL-TV in Raleigh, they did a 30-minute program for the station's 40th anniversary in 1996, but it was a bit light on station history and focused more on stories they'd covered since 1956, though there were some nice interviews with some of the former personalities and station management, such as Jesse Helms, who was general manager there and station editorialist in the 1960s before going on to become our state's longest-serving U.S. Senator, J.D. Lewis, a pioneering black disc jockey who hosted an R&B dance show on TV 5, and the legendary Charlie Gaddy, who anchored there from the '60s until 1994. Their 50th in 2006 was marked mostly--if not entirely-online. I think the retrospective is still there. Statewide public broadcaster UNC-TV, which began and is based in the market, had a nice historical program for their 40th anniversary in 1995 with lots of rare video from the early days of what began as WUNC-TV 4 in Chapel Hill. In 2005, the network didn;t any programs of which I am aware, but marked it with IDs and an online retrospective. None of the historic (as in analog channel number) UHF in the area have marked their landmark anniversaries. The oldest, Durham-licensed WRDC-TV 28, is 45 years old, with the others 31 (WLFL, WUVC) years old or less. WPMI-TV in Mobile, Alabama broadcast a newscast segment about the history of the station in 2001 before the 20th anniversary of its first broadcast in 2002. The segment included mention of some of the station's acquired programming while independent of network programming, the time the station was affiliated with the FOX Broadcasting Company, and the first local morning program produced by the station ("The FOX 15 Breakfast Club", which was broadcast on Saturday mornings and hosted by local folks who were between 13 and 19 years of age). There was no special anniversary program on the actual anniversary of the station in 2002 (March 12th). I did not see or hear anything related to the 30th anniversary of the station this year. WHAM (WOKR) 13 in Rochester is celebrating their 50th anniversary. They have been doing little pieces on their newscasts. I don't know if they are actually going to do a special program. As a former employee, I would watch. WKTV in Utica celebrated their 60th last year. I know they did a lot on their webpage but I don't know what they did on the air. A lot of history there. Several Los Angeles TV stations have had anniversary specials over the years. KTLA - 5 has had the most, having them in 5 year intervals until the 30th anniversary in 1977, then in ten year spans until the 50th in 1997. Videos of their news coverage over the years is always one of the highlights of their anniversary specials. The news helicopter (Telecopter) was invented at KTLA. Among the alumni of KTLA are Tom Snyder, Dick Enberg, Mike Wallace, Clete Roberts, and Keith Olbermann. KCOP - 13 had a pretty good 50th anniversary special in 1988. Among many others, Betty White used to be a local personality on the station.

KCBS - 2 had quite frankly, a very mediocre 50th anniversary special in 1988. They brought a lot of names back, including video of a young Johnny Carson hosting a show called "Carson's Cellar", but the program was mainly a very long plug for their upcoming new fall schedule. The special was uniformly panned throughout local media. Not one of KCBS' finest moments. Oddly enough, the 40th special on KTLA was much superior to the 50th. I know. I taped both of them, and still have them. Both the 40th and 50th specials of KTLA are available on YouTube. Quite a few Canadian television stations have aired 50th anniversary specials. One of the longest was from CFPL in London, which aired a two-hour documentary by a now-deceased local filmmaker. The entire thing is on Youtube, and includes a news open from 1979. It is one of the most complete histories of local television I've seen, and except for the late 90s material, it's more of an outsider's view of the station's history rather than self-promotion. http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=DLmNOsAeRb4&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLB9E9D43AF0A5D4D7 (the playlist link goes to Part 4 for some reason, but all parts are available from the same user) Most, but not all of CTV's O&Os have programmed specials at their 50th anniversaries; most notably CFQC and CKCK in Saskatchewan and CKCO Kitchener (all in 2004), and CJOH in Ottawa (2011). Global BC also aired a 50th anniversary special in late 2010. Other stations featured anniversary vignettes during their newscasts, including CFTO Toronto (2011) and CHEX Peterborough (2005). CBC's O&Os have generally avoided anniversary programming, instead focusing on the anniversary of CBC Television itself - which will be 60 years old in September. CORRECTIONS!!! Both KCBS and KCOP's anniversary specials in 1988 were their 40th, not 50th observances. I guess I had 50 on the brain. I was gonna say...neither station existed in 1938, and both had different call letters in their early years: KCBS was KNXT until 1988, and KCOP began life as KLAC-TV, with the aforementioned Betty White as a personality. KSTP (St.Paul/Minneapolis) did a 50 year show in 1998. I have it...somewhere... Roll Eyes Cleveland: WKYC-TV 3 did 35th (1983) and 50th (1998) anniversary shows-The 35th was a half-hour and the 50th was a full hour..The complete 35th and parts of the 50th are on YouTube.. WEWS-TV 5 did a 35th (1982) as a public party at a venue in downtown Cleveland..They also did a 50th anniversary show(1997) along with devoting an entire episode of Morning Exchange (2 hours)to the station's birthday. with former employees as guests..I believe they also had a 30th anniversary special in 1977..The 35th and 50th are both on YouTube.. WJW-TV 8 did a 30th anniversary special in 1979. This is also on YouTube.. all three stations acknowledged their 60th anniversary, but only with news stories rehashing clips from earlier specials, or doing brief promo ads..

Dallas-Fort Worth: KDFW/4 did a 50th anniversary 1-hour show in 1999. I don't remember a whole lot from the special, but I think mostly it was a couple of then/now's of their building, a few anchor and reporter interviews, and major stories covered--including of course, the JFK assassination. One glaring missing piece was no mention or pix of Judy Jordan, their first woman anchor (and the DFW market's also)--maybe she didn't want to be included (?) No updated special in 2009; they barely even acknowledged their age in a few station IDs. KXAS/5 by far did the most for their 50th anniversary. It was a 2-hour special in 1998. Lots of interviews with station personnel past and present, and news they've covered. The 60th in 2008 was basically a re-package of the 50th, and I think only an hour long. WFAA/8 did an hour special for their 50th in 1999. I don't remember much from this one either, but the big thing to me, was, similar to KDFW/4, an unmentioned past anchor. Tracy Rowlett anchored and reported for the station for 25 of the 50 years, but yet was not shown or talked about. His departure from the station was a bit ugly (and probably unnecessarily so) and the station is still spiteful about it to the present. To my knowledge, nothing has been done anniversary-wise since at Ch.8, although they did a nice end-of-analog special that included a classic sign-off from the early 1970s. KTVT/11 acknowledged their 40th in 1995 but I don't remember if there was a full special; if there was it was no longer than 30 minutes. They haven't done any to my knowledge since. Milestones might have been mentioned on newscasts, but I think the reason no anniversary specials have been done more recently is because the station went on the air Sept. 11, 1955, and they may not want to acknowledge something with a date more connotative as a nationally-known attack and tragedy. KERA/13 was the most recent to celebrate it's 50th. Some of the content is still on their website. Over the past year to year-and-a-half, different shows/pictures/etc were shown online, but I'm not sure if there was an actual aired special. One clip of interest was an opening and first few minutes of Newsroom, a nightly news show anchored by a younger Jim Lehrer (prior to his going national and pairing with Robert MacNeil). The clip was in black & white; I didn't realize (or I'd forgotten) that Ch.13 didn't have the $$$ to go color until enough donations came their way in the early 1970s. Tyler/Longview: KLTV/7 probably did some kind of 50th anniversary special in 2004 but I'm not sure; an article was posted at their website with pictures and a couple of interviews with past and present station talent. KETK/56 acknowledged early anniversaries during newscasts but I don't know if they did a special back in March for their 25th anniversary. Amarillo: All the long-running major stations in the market have passed their 50th anniversary marks (KAMR/4 and KFDA/10 in 1953; KVII/7 in 1957), but it's unknown to me whether any of them celebrated their occasions in any way. That would be sad if true. It's like not celebrating your birthday or wedding anniversary on that date just because of news reporters, news presenters, and other folks constantly referring to the attacks that occurred in 2001 simply by the calendar date. Tragedy has occurred on every date of the calendar and the eleventh day of September is no different from the rest of those dates. Here in Rochester NY, there is indeed a 50th anniversary special coming later this fall on WHAMTV (ex-WOKR) 13, or so I've been promised. I'm pretty sure you have to go back to 1999 to find anything else that was done locally with TV

history. That was the year WROC-TV 8 turned 50, and they didn't do a special but did launch what turned into a continuing series, "News 8 Then" (playing off their "News 8 Now" slogan), looking back at stories from their news archives. Before WROC did that, the local cable news channel, R News, did a special ("Out of the Box: 50 Years of Rochester TV") looking back at the histories of all the stations in town. I know this because I wrote, produced and hosted it. Grin WOKR did a 25th anniversary special in 1987, and WXXI-TV 21 did a 20th anniversary special in 1986. (WXXI did a 40th anniversary celebration in 2006, but no long-form special.) I don't recall any specials here from WHEC-TV 10 (founded 1953) or WUHF-TV 31 (founded 1980). Around the region, I know of a 50th anniversary special from WSTM in Syracuse (2000) and a 35th from WKBW in Buffalo (1993). In my Boston days, WBZ-TV and WCVB were pretty reliable about doing anniversary specials every five years - I know WBZ did specials for its 25th, 30th, 35th, 40th and 45th (I used the occasion of WBZ-TV's 45th in 1993 to produce and co-host a two-hour special on WBZ radio's history over on the AM side!), and WCVB did "5 at 20" in 1992 and "5 at 25" in 1997. I'm pretty sure WCVB kept going in 2002 (30) and 2007 (35). WNEV/WHDH-TV (Channel 7) didn't do as much, but there was a nice special in 1993 looking back on the station's history under previous owner David Mugar as he prepared to hand the station over to new owner Sunbeam. I doubt if there were any newspeople involved, but the most unique anniversary celebration I've ever heard of was WBTV Charlotte's 25th in 1974. Every night for a week they pre-empted parts of their lineup for episodes of shows from the '50s and '60s. It led to their long-running Friday-night nostalgia show "Those Were The Years." WAGA's 30th in 1979 was going along smoothly (they even found a Scottie who resembled the station's longtime mascot, Waga the dog) until the subject of the kids' show "Mr. Pix" came up. Mr. Pix, you see, was Dave Michaels, by 1979 co-anchor on "11 Alive Newsroom" on WXIA, and the station just had to get in the fact that Ch. 11's anchor was once a kids'-show host. Ch. 5 took some flap for that one. (I wonder if either WLWT or WCPO would bring up the subject of WKRC's longtime anchor Nick Clooney (George's dad) having once emceed a game show, "The Money Maze.") I cannot believe, after reading about the DFW anniversary shows, that both Judy Jordan and Tracy Rowlett were excluded. WFAA's newscast really took off when Rowlett and Iola Johnson were paired as anchors (with a boost from the newly-number-one ABC's primetime lineup) in 1976. Although I was a fan of WFAA and not KDFW, I do think Judy Jordan did just fine, and the fact that she was a pioneering female anchor in that market was worth something. Shame on both stations. If you look up the Ch.8 end-of-analog special on YouTube, they show Iola among the clips, but not Tracy. Not only that, but I've read more than once on Dallas Observer's website that in WFAA's lobby, among the framed pix of anchors and station well-knowns past and present, there is not one with Tracy Rowlett's picture at all. Not one. I'm still kinda scratching my head years later about the Judy Jordan thing. I can't believe that Ch.4 wouldn't want to include her in the special. My best guess would be that she didn't want to be included, maybe, as far as an interview or whatever, but I don't remember even a still picture image of her on-screen during the special. Although, I don't remember hearing whether her eventual departure from the station was amicable or not (I've never heard anything ugly regarding her leaving vs. what happened to Tracy over at Ch.8 ).

Another thing I forgot, IINM, none of the DFW 50th anniversary specials got saved on YouTube. As for Pittsburgh: Some of gthe better anniversary programs were produced by WTAE (ABC-4). I remember that they celebrated their 25th nn in 1983 with a weekend of old shows and commercials on the weekend near Christmas, even though their actual anniversary was in September. I have copies of their 30th anniversary on video tape from 1988 and their 40th from 1998. The 30th was a live 90 minute special that was one of the better ones I have ever seen. Lots of old clips from shows like "Hank Stohl & Friends," "Romper Room," "Adventuretime," etc. along with what goes on behind the scenes of a TV station. The 40th and 50th anniversary specials were 1 hour retrospectives that just glossed over the shows and what seemed to be lots of old stock interviews. As it seemed to be the case, the quality of the specials diminshed in much the same way as their news product has. KDKA (CBS-2) had a 60th anniversary show that was a 2 hour special in 1999, and it had a lot of interviews with some of the people who helped put the station on the air. Some of the folks featured included Josie Carey and Hank Stohl, who aren't living now. There was lots of old clips and commercials, but it didn't really overwhelm in a way that a station as prestigious and as large as KDKA is seemed to be viewed in Pittsburgh and throughout the industry. One interesting special that KDKA produced was a retrospective in honor of Bill Burns' 30 years with the station in 1983. It was basically Burns talking to the viewers and narrating clips about some of the big stories that he covered from 1953 when he started the news department there to that time. One vivid memory I have from that show is that the tapes from the moment that he announced the news that President Kennedy had been shot were shown. A friend who works there told me years ago that they have the tapes from November 22, 1963 at the station with the coverage. (It was during "The Mike Douglas Show.") I would love to have a copy of that special or watch it again. One of the more lackluster specials, in my opinion was the 50th anniversary special for WIIC/WPXI (NBC-11) in 2007. there wasn't much to it. Some clips of old shows with the focus being on "Chiller Theater" and "Studio Wrestling." The special was really a pat on the back for trying to be the alternative station to Channels 2 and 4 in town, and was trumpeting their move from one location to another in town. It seemed to be put together poorly becuase they ran the montage that NBC put together for the network's 75th anniversary in 2002. To put it in the style of David Letterman it was a "time killer." It was hokey at the end because it had a scene of "Chilly" Billy Cardille (who was on the air from Day 1) turn down the lights in the main studio signifying the end of that broadcast facility. I wanted to mention, as far as the 2-hour Morning Exchange show during WEWS-TV's 50th anniversary (December 17, 1997), that the entire show is also on YouTube. (Had to post it in 13 parts because of the then-10 minute limit on YouTube Posts) KHQ is the only station that I know of in the Spokane market that has done anniversary specials. They did one for their fiftieth ten years ago. I'm hoping it ends up on YouTube sometime soon. KHQ turns 60 in December, followed by KXLY in February, 2013 and KREM in October, 2014. It'd be nice if the three stations were to produce specials for the occasions, but I'm not holding my breath. Also celebrating a milestone anniversary this year is KAYU, Spokane's first UHF station, which will turn 30 in October. WDAF put out a DVD for it's 60th I was going to ask if KDKA pre-empted "As The World Turns" in 1963,

since Walter Cronkite interrupted it with the report that shots had been fired at JFK's motorcade. Obviously, KDKA broke in with their own what-we-now-call "special report." (BTW, did Mike air from 1-2:30 or from 1:30-3? Surely they didn't ordinarily pre-empt "Art Linkletter's House Party.") I remember that. It was one of the most excellent things that has ever aired on TV here. It actually did air over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 1983. Well-timed too, as we all spent that Christmas huddled indoors as Pittsburgh experienced an Arctic Blast with temperatures reaching -20 F. Based on Google News, The Beaver Falls, Pa. Newspaper had Mike Douglas at 1-2:30 on October 17, 1963..I wouldnt think it would have changed in the month after..This was early in Douglas' syndication..There was a one week delay from the live Cleveland telecast.. Was "Junior High Quiz" among those shows? Even though I live in the Cleveland area, I recently found on the web audio clips of four episodes of that show from 1974, posted by an alumnus of that show. These clips can be found at: http://doc-ent.com/gordon "WHAM (WOKR) 13 in Rochester is celebrating their 50th anniversary. They have been doing little pieces on their newscasts. I don't know if they are actually going to do a special program. As a former employee, I would watch." My guess is they'll probably make a big deal of it when their actual 50th birthday rolls around in September, because they still have people on staff who've been there a long time both behind and in front of the camera (anchor Don Alhart has been there for 45 out of those 50 years, joining almost immediately out of college) and there's a lot of institutional memory in the building. 13 also has the advantage of having a lot of old archive tape available for a retrospective. Crosstown NBC affiliate WHEC is coming up on 60 years in November of next year--they didn't make much of their 50th back in 2003 but maybe it'll be different this time. WROC, the oldest station in town, will be 65 years old in 2014, and they actually have the most complete news and program archive with some films and kinescopes reportedly dating back almost to the beginning, although their pioneer voices are for the most part no longer with us. Noncomm WXXI-TV will hit 50 years in 2016. It's always made a big deal out of its major anniversary milestones and the golden anniversary will probably be no exception--again there's plenty of archive tape on hand and while some of the early staffers are now retired, nearly all of them are still alive and well and available to comment. I should add that WCVB did not do one for their 40th anniversary this past March, and that WBZ has not done one since Westinghouse bought CBS in 1995. I've heard one consultant say these types of shows are unsellable. That may be the case, but they also might trigger comparisons to the past that may not be flattering to current station management. WJAR Providence did do one for their 60th anniversary in 2009, including clips on newscasts every evening that month leading up to the anniversary. It's no longer on YouTube, but there was a copy of WPIX New York's 50th, which Tony Randall hosted (and which Chuck McCann participated in.) For their 60th, they basically just re-ran classic episodes of the shows most people remembered them for (Little Rascals/Three Stooges/Odd Couple/Honeymooners)...probably because they'd

lost/misplaced a lot of the archives that they actually had available for the 50th. While they did do that, they did air a 60th anniversary special..Wasnt hugely great, though..I had Dish Network at the time and happened to see it when it was aired.. http://articles.nydailynews.com/2008-06-13/entertainment/17900568_1_new-yorkers-yule-log-threestooges Yes, Jr. High Quiz was on WTAE. It was big in the mid to late 1970s, and was sponsored by Pittsburgh National Bank. Ricki Wertz was the host and came on before the Sunday Afternoon Movies with Rege Cordic. Of all the Pittsburgh TV stations around that time, Channel 4 seemed to be the leader in local programming. Here tare the ones I remember: "AM Pittsburgh, Bowling For Dollars, Adventuretime, Jr. High Quiz, Sunday Afternoon Movies." Two questions for anyone that might have been around Pittsburgh in the early to mid 70s: -Wasn't there a comedy show on Saturday nights called "Saturday Night Instead of the Movies?" Does anyone have any info on that? -I asked about this on another forum about a Christmas promo that Channel 4 used to air with some music and words on a screen with a Currier and Ives type of backdrop. Someone said that the music was "Carol of the Belles." Does anyone have any info about that as well or a video of it. I would love to see that again. Thanks In Honolulu, there are two stations that should be celebrating their anniversaries in 2012: KHNL on July 4 (they turn 50, having signed on as Independent KTRG) and KGMB on December 1 (They turn 60, and was Hawaii's first TV station). They are now controlled by Raycom. If these stations do celebrate milestones, it'll be a brief one. I was also going to add KAAH in the mix since they will turn 30 on December 23 (when they signed on as KSHO and was Hawaii's first UHF outlet), but since Trinity owns the station don't count on anything secular from them. Defunct Cable TV networks we missed Here's my list of the defunct Cable TV networks I miss (Prevue Channel is not included in my list): America's Talking (1994-1996, now MSNBC) Turner South (1999?-2006 which was a regional cable network for the south, now regional sports network SportsSouth owned by FOX) FOX Reality Channel (where they played the Wayne Brady's Don't Forget the Lyrics reruns, now NatGeo Wild) SoapNet (2000-2012 on some providers now replaced by Disney Junior, I've first watched that channel in 2005 and addicting to pre-1982 Ryan's Hope repeats was the reason I loved it. They stopped carrying RH repeats on September 2011 after AMC went off the air.) I still get it on DirecTV for the time being. The Nashville Network/The National Network, I like the final months of The Nashville Network before September 2000 when they played Cagney & Lacey reruns of course. Also when it became The National Network it acquired WWE Wrestling programs (then WWF before that infamous lawsuit in 2002) from USA Network that year (for the next five years on that channel after it became SpikeTV), simply Spike. Does anybody remember the old slogan from The National Network from 2000-2003 called "We Got Pop!"?

Do you have any favorite defunct cable TV networks you missed alot? I miss the WWOR Superstation. I remember my local US Cable (later TCI cable) carrying WWOR Superstation until its demise in 1997. I don't know if you want to count it as a network, but it's something I miss. TechTV (nee ZDNet) was one I watched a lot when I had DirecTV. I watched it for the help on using the Windows OS, & finding surprises with the Windows system. Arts, when it was a separate nighttime service sharing the same channel as Nickelodeon, prior to being merged with The Entertainment Channel into A&E Eye on People/Discovery People I miss The Nashville Network and the original WGN from Chicago. I loved watching the parades etc. WGN America just isn't the same. My cable system carried KSTW out of Tacoma/Seattle until the mid-'90s. The station aired a lot of syndicated fare that the locals in Spokane didn't, as well as the Mariners, the Sonics, original programming, and a 10 pm newscast. After KAYU affiliated with Fox and KSKN went off-the-air, Spokane didn't have any independents, so KSTW was sort of adopted as our own. It was a great station. When the Syndex laws went into effect, things got complicated. Turning on KSTW, one was often greeted with a dark blue screen with white text that began, "We are required by the FCC..." After a few years of this, Cox (Spokane's cable system at the time) put KSTW on a part-time basis only, splitting its channel space with VH-1 half the day. The station was dropped altogether shortly after it affiliated with CBS. In its place, we got newly-independent KIRO's 12 billion daily newscasts and Mariners broadcasts on our public access station. Lame. FNN/Score (if only because of "Time Out for Trivia" and "What's News?") I liked that channel, it was so weird! It was one of the first US cable channels we got in Vancouver. I used to watch the trivia show while eating Hershey Bars dipped in Peanut Butter. Grin I miss being able to get WSMV and WTVF out of Nashville on Charter Cable in Jackson, TN. Charter claimed that they were dropped in 2009 because of the digital conversion, but the jackson Energy Authority cable system still has them, and now Charter has brought back WTVF's 5+ subchannel, but not their main channel. I liked having them as an alternative to the Memphis and Jackson stations. Along with that Cable One in Dyersburg, TN, where my mother and brother live, dropped WPSD in Paducah, KY and KFVS in Cape Girardeau, MO in 2009 using the digital conversion as the excuse as well, but I'd tend to believe that more with them than Charter. Mediacom in Columbia MO used the digital conversion excuse for dropping KSDK and KETC from St. Louis, although KSDK was syndexed out most the of the time. Pictures from those stations was often fuzzy. KIRO was never independent. It affiliated with UPN, while KSTW 11 had CBS. In 1997, KSTW got UPN and KIRO got CBS back. The Nashville Network was a great cable channel. Lots of country variety, and stuff that you will NEVER see on CMT!

And even though it's not really a "network", I nominate Prevue Guide/Channel as well, since there was no movies and stupid crap, all you got was listings, psychic ads and "Prevue Tonight". Cheesy Grin -crainbebo I too miss WWOR Superstation. I could always count on either watching Hawaii Five-O followed by Magnum, P.I., or New York Mets baseball when I got home in the afternoon during the 80's. I miss FNN and the "Time Out for Trivia" program hosted by Todd Donaho. Also one called SPN, which used to run really old, off-the-wall movies in the morning in the early 80's. They had a live continuity announcer sitting at some tech control panel someplace in Oklahoma, I think. I don't think I ever watched it, but I did know about the old Satellite Program Network (later Tempo Television)--which ended up being used to launch CNBC (which itself absorbed FNN/Score soon after). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Program_Network Mopst of upstate New York's cable systems carried all three New York independent commercial stations back in the day, including WNEW-TV Ch. 5 (predecessor to today's Fox 5, the Fox net flagship station); WOR-TV Ch. 9 (predecessor to My9 WWOR) and WPIX Ch. 11 (predecessor to today's CW flagship). They're all missed for various reasons. 5, and eventually 11,offered, among other things, not only classic films and off-net reruns but strong, well presented local newscasts. KIRO was never independent. It affiliated with UPN, while KSTW 11 had CBS. True, but in 1995, UPN only programmed four hours a week. A far cry from the 59+ hours CBS was offering. I only said "independent" because I believe Fox affiliates were still considered as such in the network's early days. I know WSVN referred to themselves an independent after they dropped NBC ("It all happens at 3 am January 1st. That's when NBC goes to channel 4, CBS to channel 6, and channel 7 becomes an independent"). I guess it's just a matter of semantics. In the South Suburbs of Chicago, our first cable system was COX and we'd get KTVU. "There's only one two...woo" Smiley I liked the news channel that ran up against CNN when it first start. I believe CNN bought them out. And I liked JC Penny shopping channel better than HSN and QVC. That was the Satellite News Channel. Only ran from 1982-83. You got KTVU THAT far E in the 80s?!? I thought it was more of an Oregon/California/AZ/NV superstation than a national one... -crainbebo I heard somewhere that KTVU was seen on Cox Cable systems nationwide, as they were (and still are) part of the same company. But unfortunately, it was not as successful as the other superstations, and was taken off the bird sometime in the early-1980s. Funny thing is that there is a relatively new cable network called "Tempo Television" (not really new; it's been around for almost seven years). This time, the network focuses on music from

Caribbean countries (i.e. Reggae and "Dancehall"). It can be found mainly on Caribbean cable systems, as well as in NY/NJ, where there is a large enough Caribbean population to make carriage on the Cablevision system worthwhile. Strangely enough, I remember the original Tempo TV airing a weekly reggae music show years ago. TechTV, before Comcast bought it and merged it with their G4 video game channel and ruined it completely. I only saw TechTV when it was either when it was free preview or had digital cable it was free for the month along with other channels that rebranded. A few examples below Discovery Wings. Watched some space shows on that even though Science shows some Biography Channel when it was just biographies History International when it was just History programs from other than the US Toon Disney. Watched Sonic on that MTVX, before becoming MTV Jams. Unfortunately, my cable provider never carried this so I never had the opportunity to watch it. I remember SPN! Back in '82, first time I was out on my own and finally had cable. They did run the most obscure B and C movies (and some British quota quickies), mostly from poverty row outfits like Monogram and PRC; the only major studio film I saw on SPN was a Dr. Kildare movie. Interesting that they morphed into CNBC. I recall A&E used to run the same couple of dozen public domain flicks at 3 or 4 am back in the 80s - I swear, "Divorce of Lady X," "Santa Fe Trail" and "Dinner at the Ritz" would be played once a month each. In the late 80s, AMC - back when it was still American Movie Classics - did not broadcast all day (at least not on our local cable system); it started at 4 pm and went off at 6 am. In the meantime it ran infomercials back to back. One was for bee pollen products; the hucksters claimed that President Reagan ate bee pollen regularly, and they sold a bee pollen candy bar called "President's Lunch" with the presidential seal on the wrapper. (Apparently the stuff didn't keep Reagan from getting Alzheimer's.) What I recall about W(W)OR is of course Morton Downey, Jr., and they briefly had an original cop drama called "The Street." And yes, I miss the old WTBS (I remember when their calls were WTCG, when Ted was just beginning to build his cable empire) - Bill Tush and his comedy newscasts, Brother Gold (a "preacher" whose sermons consisted of rock lyrics), lots of Three Stooges shorts... The only one I can think of is Spotlight. This was a premium movie channel that went off the air in perhaps 1984 or '85. We were with Storer Cable in Fairfield, CA at the time and that channel was replaced with the Movie Channel. MuchMusic USA, which would broadcast the Electric Circus each weekend. I had Primestar in the late 90s, but it was only on during the day, having to switch to pay per view in the evening. SportsChannel New York and/or SportsChannel America they used to air NY Mets ,NY Islanders ,NJ Devils ,NJ Nets and in between air Pro Wrestling as well (i.e. UWF ,IWCCW ,GWF). It went off the air after January 1984. I think The Movie Channel bought it, then replaced Spotlight with a west coast feed of The Movie Channel.

...which reminds me -- The Movie Channel replaced Star Channel, which aired both theatrical movies and entertainment specials, in 1979... Yes, I also miss Eye on People and remember when they reran Real People and That's incredible. I also miss soap net when they would rerun old nighttime soaps like Dynasty and Knots Landing. One net I miss is Nicklodeon Games and Sports and I do wish that nickelodeon game shows would be rerun on Teenick's the 90s are all that. Also, GSN when it was Game Show Network ^GSN is still the Game Show Network, even though the initials get promoted more. This is going to sound odd, but Charter Cable in Jackson, TN still has Soap Net instead of Disney Junior. I thought Soap Net was only available on dish now. Here's one I started a Wikipedia article on: CBS Cable, the lively arts network that was basically William Paley's toybox back in 1981 and 1982. Fourteen months, and it was outta there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_Cable CNN Headline News, before it became graced with HLN. CNN Headline News still exists, it just goes by the letters HLN now It was called CNN2 originally, followed by Headline News, and later CNN Headline News. I prefer the simple name of Headline News and its original format of news without the emphasis on personal feelings. I realize HLN is an evolution of a prior product. It was just a handy place to get the news. News channels today, including HLN, do everything but news unless it's "BREAKING NEWS" and even most of the time it isn't really news. The early days of the FX network, then with a lower-case "f", as in fX, airing many live shows from a studio set up like an apartment or something. Breakfast Time, Pet Shop, Sound fX, Backchat, and more, plus reruns of some TV shows throughout the day. "MuchMusic USA, which would broadcast the Electric Circus each weekend." The channel and IIRC the program still exist, but they're now seen only in their country of origin, Canada, where they're still the dominant music channel. HLN today still does offer some block "headline" half-hours. However, it is lowest common denominator news, obviously slanted for those less-informed. It is much more frivolous than CNN. You see this mostly on weekends, and it is repeated without shame. PTL (later The Inspirational Network and now INSP); along with the flagship "PTL Club", it was also the main U.S. outlet for 100 Huntley Street. Speaking of which...100 Huntley Street is rarely seen in the States anymore, but unlike The 700 Club (KJNP used to air both shows until about early 1993: Huntley Street at 6:00, 700 Club at 8:00), they don't full episodes on their YouTube channel! WCLF in Tampa Bay, the flagship of the Christian Broadcasting Network, also aired both shows during the 1980s and early-1990s -- usually Huntley at 5PM and 700 in the evening (don't know

exactly). I imagine a few other religious stations also aired both during this era. 1. 20Vision Houston, Texas 2. WWOR 3. Lifetime Medical Television 4. FNN 5. Jukebox Network 6. Court TV (airing Courtroom coverage) 7. There was another station like WWOR I forgot what it was 8. KHTV 39 Gold Houston, Texas 9. KABB TV-29 San Antonio, Texas Before the Fox 29 days! 10. The Tube Channel 55 Houston, Texas 11. Family Channel 12. The paid subscription Disney Channel 1980's (not the Disney channel today) 13. The old Nickelodian, and Nick At Nite 1980s, of course 14. Kalidoscope (San Antonio, Texas cable channel now defunct) aired Trapper John. 1998 Does anyone remember that Sports PPV channel on Rogers Cablevision Channel 37 in San Antonio, Texas back in 1988? What was it called? I don't think it was HSE. Could your 7 be KTVT 11 from Dallas? They were carried on cable systems throughout TX and the south, and also on C-Band. -crainbebo Nope, I don't think so. I was another superstation I think it used an Apple (not the Mac) Logo. That station also brought us another kids' Christian show I grew up watching in the '80s: Joy Junction!!! I understand they still show it in reruns after ending production sometime in the '90s. Lifetime Medical Television was actually Lifetime's Sunday block devoted to physician programming, and as it was brought up here before, also the only place anywhere to see those prescription ads before they went mainstream (with a separate show at the end of the block featuring all the disclaimers for the advertised drugs). Not to be nitpicky, but I believe WCLF is considered flagship of Christian TELEVISION Network..Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) had been Pat Robertson's OTA stations, then the original CBN Cable before being sold to Fox, then ABC (Now ABC Family) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCLF It was actually aired in the nightime like with Nick at Nite. It was not on just Sunday's. I have quite of few tapes of LMT programming. CNBC had American Medical Television, but we didn't get it, as we got FNN/Playboy on the Rogers Cablesystem channel 42. We didn't subscribe to Playboy so the screen was blank when the switch came on a night, scrambled on the No Box TVs. Then of course like I mentioned in that PA-NY Retro listing a few days ago, some stations had the Physician's Television Network early in the morning [a "telecourse" for physicians, pretty much.] In New York you could see it before morning cartoons on WPIX 11. -crainbebo Anyone remember CBS Cable? I remember it in 1981 or so. It was a "fine arts" channel that didn't last long. I also miss The Faith and Values Channel as well as the Odyssey channel.

The CBS Cable days of TNN, when they reran Dallas, Dukes of Hazzard, Alice, and TV's/Super Bloopers and Practical Jokes. Now, when they aired Bloopers they aired it in it's entirety and not edited like The Family Channel did. VH1 when they were music-related, and VH1 Classic when they aired all-music videos all-the-time Anyone remember when MTV was cutting edge videos, and VH1 was less cutting edge videos? Those were the good 'ole days...and who would ever think of these networks in terms of the "good 'ole days"? Gawd, I'm getting old. Grin Pinwheel and the awful puppets before it morphed or merged into Nickelodeon. Which gave us "You Can't Do That On Television," (at least gave it to the USA). Go Christine!!! Does anyone remember the Modern Satellite Network (MSN)? I don't think it qualifies as a TV network "we missed," but it's one of those vague channels that seemingly came and went in the blink of an eye. Here's what I remember: My cable company at the time, Jones Intercable, carried MSN on Channel 39 circa 1984-85. (It was considered a "bonus channel," since my parents had a cable-ready TV; those with boxes only went up to Channel 36 and couldn't receive it.) I can't really recall what MSN carried, though I do remember watching a show on space travel on one occasion. Jones Intercable only carried MSN for three hours, 9 a.m. to noon Central Time. I'm not sure if MSN's schedule was a mere three hours, or if this was all my cable company carried. As for as I know, Jones Intercable didn't share Channel 39 with any other cable networks. In this era of cable TV, a slot on Channel 39 was akin to being in Siberia. Speaking of Bonus Channels, there was a couple of instances where a cable company allocated a slot for one cable channel only, but though the channel was part-time, did not bother to cover up any off-time. In the 1980s, Group W in Tampa Bay offered the Home Theater Network as a premium channel, but as it broadcasted only during the afternoons and evenings, it shared transponder space with the Appalachian Communications Network, a foreerunner of today's TLC. Even though ACN was not a premium channel, it was still scrambled, as Group W intended the slot solely for HTN. Later on, after becoming Paragon Cable, Sports Channel Florida came on the scene, but as it was on only in evenings and weekends, it shared its transponder with a Christian channel, the Keystone Inspirational Network, as well as specialty and wild feeds that would also use that transponder when it was vacant. Paragon showed it all. , too, recall the shared channel space scenario. My cable company in the mid-80s, Jones Intercable, carried The Learning Channel and the Financial News Network. I vividly remember, as a kid, TLC signing off at 3 p.m. Central and the transponder space immediately being turned over to Home Theater Network. Jones Intercable didn't carry HTN, but once in a while someone would be asleep at the switch and let HTN run for an hour or so. FNN shared channel space with the short-lived Sports Time in 1984-85. (This predates FNN's own evening sports-themed network called SCORE.) Jones Intercable didn't carry Sports Time but, like the TLC-HTN scenario, Sports Time sometimes played out a bit before being zapped. The switch from FNN to Sports Time, as I recall, took place at 6 p.m. Central. Jones Intercable did carry the full signal of Nickelodeon and the Arts & Entertainment Network when the two still shared one channel space before the launch of Nick at Nite in 1986. Azumanga's mention about shared channel space really jogged my memory of my childhood observations. Curiosity got the better of me, and I came across this You Tube video from 1985:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE3C1BWE3a4 As you'll note, The Learning Channel is signing off and Home Theater Network is signing on. I vividly remember that jingle as TLC signed off. It's funny seeing it again for the first time, more than a quarter of a century later. Jones Intercable did carry the full signal of Nickelodeon and the Arts & Entertainment Network when the two still shared one channel space before the launch of Nick at Nite in 1986. [/quote] Correction on my earlier post: Nick at Nite launched in 1985. Viewer's Choice. I remember when they first rolled it out to Warner Cable Houston subscribers about 1987, to 1988. My grandparents had all the channels, then in January 1989 they got scrambled. I am assuming when the network first became availble, the did a extended free preview or something like that. I remember watching Bad Dreams, and some other titles from back in the day. Out in San Antonio there was Valuvision some type of shopping network aired on Paragon cable. And then there was the Jukebox network, Paragon cable channel 44, replaced EWTN religious back in 1990 until June of 1992, when the olympics triplecast replaced it, followed by yet another First Choice Pay Per View channel. I think this was the PPV network on Rogers Cablevision back in 1988 in San Antonio on Channel 37, I am sure. I remember Viewer's Choice. The Jones Intercable operation in my area began carrying the service in summer 1986. Each week, there would be one movie shown at select times throughout the week. I believe each movie was $4.95 and would be added to the cable bill at the end of the month. On the off hours, when a movie wasn't being shown, the channel would host previews of the current and future films, unscrambled. I have several brochures stashed away somewhere on Viewer's Choice. I believe, but am not 100 percent certain, that my particular cable operator placed Viewer's Choice on Channel 26 -- a slot that had been held by Satellite Program Network (SPN). Jukebox Network later morphed into The Box, which was carried on a huge network of LPTVs and translators. Valuevision was an LPTV shopping network, which would later morph into today's ShopNBC. -crainbebo I used to live beyond cable, so I had a BUD(Big Ugly Dish) in the back yard. I loved that thing!!! One channel on the C-band was "Channel America" which had lots of public domain stuff and a show that consisted of clips TV historian Ira Gallen would show, called "Matinee At the Bijou". "Channel America must have been on some cable systems, does anybody recall it? I vaguely recall Channel America, and I know "Matinee at the Bijou" only as a series PBS ran in the early-mid '80s. Attempts to revive the show are apparently stymied by lack of funding. Here's their blog: http://matineeatthebijou.blogspot.com/

Yep. Channel America was an LPTV/translator network, just like The Box was. There was also the American Independent Network [AIN, anyone remember that?] in the mid '90s as well as Main Street TV, another LPTV network. C-Band of course, had all the wild feeds you could take. Remember watching Star Trek TNG via a C-Band dish, raw with black in the commercial breaks? They still do that, but it's all digital or Pathfire [many syndicated programs are fed via a wild satellite feed, digitally and/or in HD]. -crainbebo Like rnigma stated, I too vaguely remember Channel America; the only thing I could remember about them is around 1990 or '91, they picked-up Wally George's "Hot Seat" talk show to air nationally. Didn't Channel America eventually become (or merged with) America One? And AIN got caught up with HTV (Hispano Television Ventures) and HTVN (Hispanic Television Network), another defunct network that got some full-power broadcast stations, but ended up mostly on LPTV stations. AIN's demise was due in large part to its owner's focus on HTVN, which itself wasn't making it as a OTA network. Following AIN's closure, HTVN's owners abandoned OTA to make it a cable-only network, however, cable carriage came too late to save it. Valuevision aired on Paragon Cable during the early 90s. Channel 23 before the launch of KHCE. Jukebox renamed The Box was on LP TV Channel 19 in 1995 TLC's Red Light Special aired a lot on it. Only availble with Big Ugly Dish, I remember in July 1990 at a satelitte dealer on Perrin Beitel now CD Traders having that in the channel lineup in the brochure. Some cable providers picked it up as well. Cablevision of Southern Illinois, which served my hometown, had it on their line-up beginning around 1990 (the Universal 9 era) and carried at least through mid/late 90s (EMI/UPN). At that time, UPN was covered by the EMI service feed, which sucked because Evansville, IN didn't have a UPN affiliate at the time (or, if they did, Cablevision didn't carry it) and I missed out on the first couple seasons of "Star Trek Voyager." WWOR's EMI wasn't carried on a lot of systems for some reason. WGN was widely carried however. -crainbebo Paragon Cable in Tampa Bay also carried WWOR and the later EMI service, but dropped the channel around 1992 and 1993 in favor of another channel (don't know which) -- they picked it up again in 1995 following the merger of Vision Cable (which also carried WWOR) and Paragon, which created Time Warner Cable in the region. After WWOR/EMI became Animal Planet at the end of 1996, another company picked up WWOR's original signal, but only for BUD satellite dishes. When I lived in southwest Miami, TCI of South Dade carried WWOR EMI (later renamed AEC) Service until the end. I would tune in most nights at 7:00 pm to watch Night Heat. That would be National Programming Services [NPS]. I think they also picked up the Primetime 24 service [WSEE, WNBC, etc], maybe even the Denver stations on Satcom F1.

-crainbebo Like rnigma stated, I too vaguely remember Channel America; the only thing I could remember about them is around 1990 or '91, they picked-up Wally George's "Hot Seat" talk show to air nationally. Channel America aired on low-power K25DM in North Phoenix from 1990-93. I remember Channel America airing some second- or third-tier wrestling association (World Class Championship Wrestling?) right before "Hot Seat with Wally George". Didn't Channel America eventually become (or merged with) America One? I read somewhere that Main Street TV eventually changed its name to America One, and Channel America just faded away. I could be wrong about that though. "Anyone remember CBS Cable? I remember it in 1981 or so. It was a "fine arts" channel that didn't last long." CBS poured a lot of cash into trying to push that channel--which was Bill Paley's last brainchild. He hoped it would be a commercial, fulltime cultural alternative to PBS' nighttime cultural programming and present the cream of the classical music, jazz, drama and stage comedy crops. It gobbled a ton of cash at a time when stockholders were screaming about profit margins (remember that the country was just coming out of another bad recession in '81), they had to cut back on ambitious program plans almost immediately, and it reportedly broke Paley's heart when he had to shut it down after trimming programming several times to try to keep it alive through the rough times. It just didn't quite make it. Would it have lasted if they'd given it another six months or a year to get going, at a time when cable penetration was starting to rise nationally? Who knows? Paley reportedly thought to his dying day that a little more time and CBS Cable would have gotten the audience it needed to stay alive, but no one today can say (and probably no one around CBS today even remembers it, or admits to...). Here's an article that appeared in The Spokesman-Review about the brutal attack KSTW faced from Spokane stations, most vocally KAYU-28, after Syndex began being enforced: KSTW faces Spokane assault New rule gives local stations a competitive advantage By Michael Murphey The Spokesman-Review Sunday, March 18, 1990 Robert J. Hamacher loves it every time he sees that blank blue screen light up on channel 23. Hamacher, the managing general partner of KAYU-TV Partners in Spokane, is no diplomat. I want KSTW out of here, he says. And by exercising his exclusive rights to certain syndicated television shows in the Spokane market, he is doing his best to push the Tacoma-based independent television station back over to its own side of the Cascades. Although the other three Spokane television stations are a little less blunt in their public assessments of competition from KSTW, they, too, are aggressively pursuing options that require Cox Cable of Spokane to black out four to five hours of programming on KSTW each day. Syndicated exclusivity, or syndex, in TV talk, is a Federal Communications Commission rule that went into effect Jan. 1. The rule allows local television stations to protect their exclusive rights to syndicated programming by blacking out distant stations that reach the local market via cable.

[EDIT*-truncated to comply with Fair Use standards and the site's terms of service] I remember it - started a Wikipedia article about it a few years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_Cable Which station in your market was/is pre-emption happy Which TV station in your market was/is pre-emption happy? For example my market Greenville/Spartanburg, SC falls under this because the local ABC station WLOS 13 has been preemption happy over the years pre-empting ABC shows like the ABC era "The Edge of Night" (197584), All American Girl (with Margaret Cho from 1994-95), Fudge (ABC Saturday morning series based on Judy Blume books), Fame, Fortune, and Romance, the final five years of Ryan's Hope from 1984-89 which means viewers in Upstate South Carolina/Western North Carolina and Northeast Georgia didn't get to see future Martin star Tichina Arnold appear on the show unless watching from WJBF 6 in Augusta, GA or WSB 2 in Atlanta, GA. Also the late Frank Reynolds' first two years anchoring ABC Evening News from 1968-1970, the first five years of now-defunct OLTL, ABC run of $10,000/$20,000 Pyramid with the late Dick Clark, Home, Ross Shafer's Match Game, Never Too Young (I think), the first two years of Dark Shadows which means viewers in GSP didn't get to see the (first run unless watching reruns on Sci-FI/Syfy or MPI DVDs/VHS tapes) preBarnabas B&W era to how Barnabas became a vampire in 1795 before clearing on April Fools 1968 (three days before MLK was fatally wounded in Memphis), etc. Recently, WLOS went back to the pre-emption happy roots by refusing to clear Litton's Weekend Adventure from ABC Network this past season and air one infomercial and syndie E/I shows instead (some aren't in HD, while the Litton's block is in HD). I had to watch Litton's block over-theair via WJBF 6 in Augusta, GA. I called WLOS' toll-free number about this, but the program director was no help since he had a bad hearing problem. Do you have some stations in your market that was or is pre-emption happy? No one in Boston is now (with both WBZ and WFXT being O&Os), but in the 1960s WNAC (now WHDH) was an ABC affiliate that preempted much of the daytime programming. When WIHS (now WSBK) came on in 1964 they picked up much of the ABC daytime lineup for the rest of the decade. Around 1994 they were CBS and preempted the CBS Morning News for more local news. It was picked up by WABU until 1995 when the CBS affiliation went to WBZ. NBC made no secret about not being happy with preemptions from WBZ. In the late 80s both WMFP and WSMW picked up "Another World" at various times. When WCVB came on the air their mission was to put on as much local programming as possible. That's why CBS took the affiliation to WNAC. ABC seemed to be OK with it, but as their ratings got better WCVB ran in-patterm more of the time. However "Welcome Back Kotter" was shuttled to WSBK on Saturday afternoons. The big one now is WMFP preempting overnight and early morning programming from ME-TV for infomercials. WNAC as a CBS affiliate on Channel 7 owned by RKO was very good about CBS shows, rarely preempting anything. They even ran the Sunday Morning hour long cartoon block from CBS that most affiliates did not. WHen RKO lost WNAC and the station became WNEV and locally owned, moderate amounts of shows got preempted from about 1985 on. WBZ TV was horrible as an NBC affiliate with preemptions. They would preempt an occasional prime time movie, a couple hours a week of lower rated prime time NBC shows, almost at random. Daytime was a nightmare. They preempted a good 2 hours a day of NBC Daytime shows. The

noon hour was always preempted. The 10 AM hour was also at some points. From 1982 on they also did not carry Another World. Channel 5 WCVB was also heavy with preemptions even preempting about half of the ABC Saturday Morning cartoon lineup. The SUnday morning lineup of cartoon reruns? FORGET IT. They also did not clear Edge Of NIght, whatever aired from 11 AM-12:30 PM, plus they also preempted an occasional movie from ABC. Now from the 1970's to about 1982, NBC castaways were cleared by WSBK and ABC castaways were cleared by 56 WLVI in many cases. From 1982 to the fall of 1985, Channel 68 WQTV began clearing all the network rejects from all 3 networks. Problem though was that WQTV reached only about 30 miles outside Boston. So those NBC viewers living in new Hampshire were out of luck being in many parts of the state WBZ TV was the only NBC affilliate to reach these areas cable as well as off the air. Far enough north and West you could get 31 WNNE Dartmouth NH region which cleared NBC's whole schedule. Far enough north and east you could get Channel 6 in Maine which while bad with preemptions, they were better than WBZ TV. South of Boston was 10 WJAR which cleared all but an hour or so of NBC shows and to the west was 22 WWLP Springfield which preempted about an hour a day. Problem still was many of the WBZ premptions were also preempted by neighboring markets. With Channel 5 WCVB, though, going north to Manchester was 9 WMUR which cleared ABC's entire Schedule until the early 90's. So anything not on from ABC on WCVB aired on WMUR. WPRI 12 Providence was also not too bad with preemptions. WNEV began to moderately preempt by 1984. WFSB Hartford and Channel 6 WLNE Providence were worse though. Channel 68 also cleared those preempted shows. Then when WQTV bought large amounts of shows and overpaid, they stopped taking network castaways that September of 1985. Then when they nearly went dark and lost most of their shows, WQTV resumed picking up network castaways. In 1987 April when Christian Science Monitor took them over, the network preempted shows then moved to 27 WHLL Worcester which kept the NBC and ABC shows till 1993. WABU 68 picked up the CBS rejected shows 1993 till WBZ TV took CBS in 1995. Channel 62 picked up NBC and ABC shows till WHDH 7 took NBC. At certain points, ch. 4 was even worse. I believe it was sometime during 1984 that they were carrying Santa Barbara at 10 am, Days at 2 pm and nothing else but Wheel of Fortune and Scrabble, one of which was out of pattern in the 3 pm hour. I believe there was only a half hour in pattern. I do have a TV Guide from when they had this schedule and will try to post if I can find it. Interestingly enough though, ch. 4 was never too bad about clearing the NBC Saturday morning cartoons/kid shows. They typically didn't pre-empt more than a half hour, usually for a local program. In Pittsburgh there are very few pre-emptions anymore, at least in prime-time. Primarily because the sports teams have all gone to cable on ROOT Sports. WTAE and KDKA will still pre-empt regular programming for pretty much anything that has the word "Steelers" in it. KDKA for pre-season games, and WTAE for ESPN/NFL Network games featuring the Steelers. And both will pre-empt for preview shows, coach's shows, etc. In the old days KDKA would pre-empt 30+ times per year for Pirate baseball. And the Penguins would pre-empt a dozen or so times per year on WIIC (WPXI) (until they moved to WPGH, which was an independent at the time and as such really had no network to pre-empt). KDKA may be most notorious for pre-empting "As The World Turns"

for its local "Pittsburgh 2Day" until the station became a CBS o&o. I don't think, from a ratings standpoint, that was too terrible a move, but when the station flipflopped "Guiding Light" and Dr. Phil, putting "GL" at 10 AM and Dr. Phil at 3 PM his ratings never touched what "GL" did at 3. WMAR Baltimore was another station not at all reluctant to pre-empt for sports, especially if the Orioles were involved. The two most pre-emption happy stations I've ever encountered are WSB Atlanta when it was an NBC affiliate and WTVT Tampa/St. Petersburg when it was CBS. In the '60s and '70s WSB would consistently pre-empt NBC's 12 N-2 PM programs, schedule at least one movie from its own library in primetime, and pre-empt all NBC sports programming (except NFL football) on Sundays in order to get in a movie and Lawrence Welk. Actually, although WSB still has a reputation as pre-emption happy, I think it's WGCL that plays the most fast and loose with its schedule, bumping "Young And The Restless" to 3 PM and from what I hear sometimes pre-empting CBS primetime for movies or even infomercials. In the '70s I recall WTVT pre-empting "The Young And The Restless," "The Joker's Wild," and "Tattletales," and delaying "Search For Tomorrow" a halfhour to accommodate an hour-long noon newscast (by contrast, by 1974 NBC affiliate WFLA and ABC affiliate WLCY/WTSP were carrying all their networks' daytime shows in pattern). WTVT also pre-empted at least one of the CBS movies in favor of one of its own, never carried the "CBS Late Movie" on Friday nights, and pre-empted both CBS's Saturday newscast and its late-Sunday-night (11 PM) one; the Sunday-morning 9-10 AM cartoon block wasn't carried either. And before I moved to Florida they had a movie on Monday night which forced the delays of "Gunsmoke" and "Here's Lucy," although that had ended by the time I got there in July 1973. Dallas/Ft. Worth, when I was there (1976-79), was probably the least pre-emption prone; KDFW did delay CBS's late movie a week and pre-empted CBS's religious/cultural block of "Lamp Unto My Feet," "Look Up And Live," and "Camera Three." KXAS (NBC) delayed "Sanford And Son" reruns from 9 AM to 3:30 PM and didn't carry "NBC Nightly News" on weekends; WFAA (ABC) delayed ABC's "Wide World Of Entertainment" until after its 10:30 PM movie and pre-empted ABC's Saturday 5:30 PM newscast. The delays started coming after I left, especially on KXAS, which played fast and loose with NBC's daytime schedule in the '80s. Though I believe WTVT eased up on the pre-emptions by the time my family moved to Florida in 1979. Don't know about "Search For Tomorrow", though, as it was not seen in this area after it made its move from CBS to NBC (WXFL / WFLA had news at noon and "All In The Family" at 12:30PM). According to past retro schedules, other stations would sometimes pick up what was pre-empted -WXLT (WWSB) in Sarasota carried "Joker" when it was bumped by WTVT, but it was seen on a half-hour delay, opposite "live" telecasts of "The (New) Price is Right" and "The $10,000 Pyramid" on WTVT. The Friday CBS movies, the weekend CBS News and the Sunday morning cartoons were usually picked up by WTOG. Ch. 40 in Sarasota also carried "Dinah's Place" before WFLA picked it up, and as far as I can tell CBS's Friday late movie on Saturday nights at 11:30. At one time WTOG was prone to pick up network movies pre-empted by the affiliates; I think around 1971 it was carrying NBC's on Saturday and CBS's on Friday. It also carried daytime reruns of "Love, American Style" during a period

when Ch. 10 (ABC) pre-empted them; 10 eventually put them on a day-behind at 11 AM. However, unlike many ABC affiliates, 10 was pretty reliable about carrying the 4 PM show; it eventually put "Love, American Style" back at 4, carried "Pyramid" when it was on at that time, "The Money Maze," the new "You Don't Say!", and (and I don't know what happened after I left Florida) was carrying "Edge Of Night" in 1976. One show I didn't mention that was dropped on 13 was "The Secret Storm" after CBS put it back at 4 in March 1973. I guess the station realized the show's days were numbered and, IIRC, had "Big Valley" at 4. Now to change the subject a little, I have a question for people from Cincinnati: what did WCPO have against "Love Of Life"? It almost always found something else to put at 11:30 AM. I'm aware it was not a P&G show, but still it had a 28+ year run but was rarely seen after CBS's early-'60s switch from WKRC. By 1979, WTSP was already pre-empting "The Edge of Night" for syndicated programming, though WXLT / WWSB carried it to the end. For a time in the late 70s, WFAA aired whatever ABC had Sunday at 6, the following Saturday afternoon, instead airing public affairs programming in that time slot. KXAS aired a number of Rangers games until the early 80s (when KTVT got the rights), pre-empting NBC programming. Cleveland: Back in the day (70's, 80's, early 90's, up to the 94-95 affiliate switches), both WEWS/5 (ABC) and WJW[WJKW]/8 (CBS) were fairly preemption-happy, especially during daytime. WEWS did not clear the second hour of GMA for years, and did not carry the show at all (and it's predecessor AM America) until the late 70's. Whatever ABC and CBS had at noon or 4PM was preempted or delayed by WEWS or WJW for noon news or syndicated programming, respectively. I think WJW also preempted CBS in the 3PM hour at times as well. WJW did not clear any CBS late night programming from the mid-70's until Letterman moved to CBS, and preempted CBS prime time often in the 70's when they had the Cleveland Indians games. WKYC/3 (NBC) was an O&O, and cleared the entire NBC schedule in pattern. The ABC situation was not as bad, because of the presence of WAKR/23 in Akron, receivable over much of the Cleveland market, which cleared all ABC shows that WEWS did not. Except for WUAB/43 carrying some of the pre-empted CBS prime time shows in the 70's, and WCLQ/61 carrying the CBS Late Movies for a while in the 80's, the preempted shows generally were not picked up by the local indies. Today, the king of pre-emptions is WKYC/3, which carries pre-season Browns games and 20 Cleveland Indians games, which usually conflict with NBC programming. KDKA Pittsburgh pre-empted weak primetime shows in the 70's and 80's for "Channel to Pittsburgh" and "Fight Back with David Horowitz". They dumped the Pat Sajak show for sitcom reruns and initially delayed David Letterman for Inside Edition. And in the 70s they prempted controversial movies such as "Death Wish". WPXI aired "Hee Haw" instead of "Diff'rent Strokes" and "Silver Spoons". In Pittsburgh all three network affiliates were preemption happy well into the 90's. KDKA TV in 1993 preempted CBS Morning News for Disney Afternoon Cartoons which they ran weekdays at 7 AM to 9 AM. They preempted a couple hours of Saturday Cartoons from CBS in favor of syndicated cartoons. They also from that late 80's until CBS gave the 10 AM hour back to affiliates in 1994, did

not air whatever CBS had in teh 10 AM hour. In the fall of 1995 after the CBS/Group W deal to form an alliance began KDKA cleared the entire CBS schedule, eventually being an O & O in 1996. WTAE was very preemption heavy. They preempted the 11 AM hour from ABC as well as whatever was on at noon from ABC for syndicated shows and local news. They eventually also preempted the 12:30 PM show Loving after Ryan's Hope was canceled (which they did not ever run). They also delayed Nightline to Midnight as well. They did run the entire Saturday Morning lineup of cartoons until June of 1992, when they abruptly dumped that in favor of a 4 and a half hour news block matching Channel 11 WPXI's block of news (which they had beginning in 1990). In 1994, WTAE began running Bugs & Tweety Saturday mornings at 7; the Weekend Special at 12:30; whatever ran in the 8 AM hour on Sunday mornings at 7. In 1996, WTAE ran Doug Sunday at 7 AM right before the news block; and Bugs & Tweety at 7 AM Saturdays. In 1998, WTAE began running Bugs & Tweety Sunday mornings at 7 AM, and Disney's One Saturday Morning Block 10 AM to Noon Saturdays. They made the Saturday Newscast 7 to 10 AM and Noon to 12:30. They also preempted the Home SHow when it was 90 minutes, made into 60 minutes, from 1988 to 1994. They continued preempting Mike & Maty during their entire run followed in 1996 by Carol & Marylin, which they also did not clear. They did not clear Loving which aired at 12:30 till that was canceled nationally in 1995, They City did not clear in 1996 and 1997 either. They also did not run Port Charles at all during that run and continued preemptions of 12:30 time slot till ABC gave the time back. They eventually ran the View in 1998 overnights. By 2000, though they began running the View at 11 AM. WPXI also preempted an hour of the weekday lineup, ran most of the Saturday Morning Cartoons till 1990 in the spring when they began a 4 & a half hour newscast 8-12:30. They continued to preempt the NBC lineup in 1992 when cartoons were dropped nationally in favor of Saturday Today. Eventually by 2000, WPXI began clearing the late Saturday teen lineup. WPTT ran some netowrk rejects till they affiliated with Home shopping Club in 1992. After that rejected Network shows could be viewed on NBC and CBS stations in Stubenville, Johnstown/Altonna, and Erie. After 1992, most rejected network offerins simply did noty air in Pittsburgh. KIRO preempts Face the Nation to 12AM Monday Morning. KOMO last night preempted the ENTIRE ABC prime-time lineup for a Children's Miracle Network telethon. Plus, KZJO 22 pre-empts the MNTV programming to 12-2AM each morning so that they can air a double-run of The Simpsons and a newscast produced by sister station KCPQ. -crainbebo It seems like this thread comes up in some form every few months, but I'll mention WMC NBC 5 in Memphis again. They were at their worst from the late 70's to the early 90's, especially in daytime, pre-empting most of NBC's morning game shows. While WEWS was pre-emption happy at times, KYW was even worse..As mentioned in other threads, KYW would think nothing of putting a Westinghouse produced series during NBC prime time..WEWS from 1964-70 would carry a local movie package Fridays from 9-11 or maybe 7:309..WJW did the same thing on Mondays, except they would start the movie at 10, Interrupt the movie at 11 for news, and go back to the movie at 11:15 or 11:20.. WAKR-TV in Akron in the late 50's early 60's actually carried very little of ABC's Prime Time Schedule, going with Double Feature Movies, Akron U and High School Sports and other local programming. Channel 49 didnt begin really carrying ABC's Prime Time lineup till 1963-64.. KYW was also known for not carrying The Tonight Show with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson, instead passing it on to WEWS. Channel 3 would not pick up Johnny until a few months after it became WKYC.

It does seem like this topic crops up again and again every few months here, doesn't it? Grin You always mention channel 5 in Memphis, while I mention channel 6 (WPSD) in Paducah. I no longer live near enough to Paducah to comment on their current programming, but they were known for pre-empting prime-time programming (including The Cosby Show one Thursday evening) for University of Kentucky basketball. They delayed Saturday Night Live by an hour for close to 20 years before they started presenting it on time. Of course, by then, everyone had lost interest in it! Roll Eyes To get NBC programming back in those days, you would have had to have both of them on cable, or live in the Obion River bottoms (and risk flooding!) with a good pair of rabbit ears! WBIR-TV 10 (CBS affliliate until 1988/NBC since) was notorious for pre-empting regular CBS programming, along with special such as Award Shows, Movies and other programming in order to show the lastest Country Music preformer special for the third time in two months (such as The Statler Brothers on the Mississippi River, Kenny Rogers at Home for Christmas, etc.). I remember one Wednesday night, CBS was showing a movie that I was really wanting to see only to be preempted by a Statler Brothers Special that had already been shown at least two times prior to that showing. In Philadelphia, Westinghouse's KYW TV Channel 3 was notorious for preemptions. In the 70's, they preempted about 90 minutes of the NBC Daytime lineup, usually the 12 Noon hour and the 11:30 PM offering joining NBC at 130 PM for Days Of Our Lives. That 90 minutes had NBC shows that came and went. Until the end of 1976, WPHL 17 ran the preempted NBC shows 9-10 AM (when KYW was only preempting the noon hour). KYW also occasionally preempted a prime time NBC show with lower ratings for local specials or some NBC movies for a syndicated movie. They were running the NBC Saturday Morning lineup in its entirity though. From Winter to Summer of 1977 WKBS TV Channel 48 ran preempted NBC daytime shows at 930 AM, Noon, and 1 PM. They would run Name that Tune at noon, Lucy Show at 1230 which was syndicated and back to NBC show at 1 which was The Gong Show. That Fall, 17 WPHL ran the preempted NBC shows Noon to 130. KYW TV then got worse with preemptions in the fall of 1980. They preempted the 10 AM to 1 PM time slot for Hour Magazine, People Are Talking, and News. Channel 17 ran NBC rejects 9-10 AM, 1130-1 PM, leaving out one of the shows. In the Fall of 1981, KYW was back down to 2 hours worth of NBC preemptions and they ran about an hour of NBC game shows out of pattern in late afternoons mixed in with syndicated game shows. They would remain like this until 1991 when they went down to preempting only one hour a day due to the fact that NBC was giving that hour back to affiliates anyway. They remained like this till they became a CBS affiliate/quazi O & O (eventually a true O & O after the Westinghouse merger. 65 WRBV/WJST ran some NBC rejects from 1982 to 1985. Channel 29 WTAF/WTXF ran some rejects until 1989 or so. After that Channel 40 WIldwood would be on most of the cable systems to make up for the preemptions (they cleared NBC's whole schedule). 6 WPVI also preempted quite a bit of ABC shows. Not as bad as KYW. They would preempt whatever ABC offered at noon for local news. They also preempted Good Morning America entirely from its 1975 launch until 1977 for Captain Noah and his Magical Ark which was a kids show mixing in pre 41 colorized Porky Pig cartoons, post 48 Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons, Made for TV Popeyes, Mr Magoo, and Gumby. In 1977 they began running the 7 AM hour of Good Morning America and Captain Noah 8-9 AM. In the fall of 1978 as CHannel 17 acquired the Bugs & Porky Cartoons and 29 acquired the Popeyes, Channel 6 relegated Captain Noah to weekends. Channel 6 also began preempting the 4 PM ABC show in 1975 which was Edge of Night beginning in 1976. Channel 48 WKBS TV ran the ABC rejects 10 to 11 AM. Beginning in 1978, WPVI's rejects were 20,000 dollar Pyramid and Edge of Night. Beginning in the summer of 1980, WPVI preempted the 11 AM hour as well as the 4 PM hour. They ran Family Feud at 11:30 initially and at 10 AM eventually. That 11 AM offering was usually The Love Boat. Channel 48 ran those 2 shows 1030 to Noon.

In the Summer of 1983, WPVI preempted Loving, Edge Of Night, and Too Close For Comfort. Channel 48 decided to dump ABC rejects that May except for Too Close For Comfort with plans to drop that in the fall (unaware they would instead go dark end of August - that decsion being made July 14). Rejects moved to Channel 29 WTAF for a while and then to WSJT and then to NBC affiliate Channel 40 in Wildwood in the 9 AM hour and 4 PM slot. As an O & O they continued preempting the 11 AM to 1230 hour and a half. Finally when ABC canceled Ryans Hope, Loving began to be run on Channel 6 in 1988. Beginning in 1992 when ABC gave back the 12 Noon slot, Channel 6 began running 30 minutes of teh Home Show in 92 and then 30 minutes of Mike and Maty (which morphed out of the Home Show and replaced that show anyway). Finally in 1997, they began clearing the entire ABC schedule when the View premiered. Saturday Morning cartoons were run in their entirety till 1978. Sunday Morning they ran the 11 AM hour from 930 to 1030 AM, ran 1030 in pattern and then Al Alberts at 11 AM. In 1978 they began preempting the 8 AM cartoon for Captian Noah which began at 730 AM. They also ran Captian Noah with Kids Are People Too Mixed in. At one point, they began mixing the 8 AM Saturday Morning 8 AM offering within the hour Captian Noah show. They also began preempting the 11 AM Saturday Morning offering for local public affairs in 1978. They continued this practice till the mid 80's. By 1986, they began running the 11 to 1230 PM Saturday morning cartoons from 6 to 730 AM. By 1995 they ran the Saturday Morning cartoons in pattern. What was so ironic about Channel 6 was after they became an O & O they continued to preempt ABC shows, though they no longer occasionally preempted prime time programs anymore. What happened was their owners Cap Cities bought ABC so Cap Cities had been running Channel 6 so they continued running it as they saw fit, while original ABC O & O stations wree run differently. It seemed the Cap Cities ABC O & O stations were run as their own seperate unit till Disney bought ABC. Also Channel 10 WCAU preempted a small amount of CBS shows even as an O & O. This was only Saturday Morning and Sunday morning offerings. In 1975 WCAU preempted an hour of Sunday morning CBS public affairs offerings. In 1976 they ran only 30 minutes of the hour of CBS Sunday morning children's shows. In 1977 they preempted the entire sunday morning hour of cartoons. In the fall of 1978, they preempted the entire Sunday Morning cartoons and the 8 AM hour of Saturday morning cartoons. In the Winter of 79, they moved the syndicated Marlo Movie Machine show to Sunday mornings (which went to 30 minutes from 60) and began running the Sunday morning cartoons at 8 AM Saturday morning preempting the Saturday morning 8-9 AM offerings. In the Fall of 1979, they began running the Saturday morning cartoons in their entirity but preempted the Sunday morning ones. beginning in Spring 1980 they brought back the Sunday morning cartoons again. From the Fall of 1980 on WCAU began running the entire CBS lineup again. In 1995 KYW became the CBS affiliate and then an O & O. They had begun preempting all but an hour of NBC teen shows and the Saturday Today SHow since its debut in 1992. But as a CBS O & O they ran Saturday morning news 6-10 AM (they ran this till Noon as an NBC affiliate). They ran the 10 AM to 1 PM cartoons in pattern. Then On Sunday Morning they ran the Saturday 8-10 AM cartoons from 7 AM to 9 AM Sunday morning. So they cleared the entire lineup but delayed 2 of the hours. A few clarifications... Yeah, KYW was pretty bad with pre-emptions. During the 1970s, the Tuesday 8PM NBC offering (The Runaways, Baa Baa Black Sheep, etc.) was always replaced with "Meeting House" and "Black Edition". This didn't change until (IIRC) 1979-80. In the early 1970s, the Saturday NBC movie was frequently bumped to WPHL. RE: Daytime...WTAF, WPHL and WKBS all ran KYW's castoffs throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.

They would remain like this until 1991 when they went down to preempting only one hour a day due to the fact that NBC was giving that hour back to affiliates anyway. The near-last straw was KYW's dumping a Friday night NBC hour in the early 1990s for "The Bulletin with Larry Kane". Had CBS and Westinghouse not merged in 1994 (making KYW a CBS O&O), NBC would likely have dumped KYW for another station. Quote They remained like this till they became a CBS affiliate/quazi O & O (eventually a true O & O after the Westinghouse merger. 65 WRBV/WJST ran some NBC rejects from 1982 to 1985. Channel 29 WTAF/WTXF ran some rejects until 1989 or so. After that Channel 40 WIldwood would be on most of the cable systems to make up for the preemptions (they cleared NBC's whole schedule). I dont recall channel 65 ever carrying any NBC shows. WTAF aired the 10-11AM programs (usually sitcom reruns or game shows) until the mid-late 1980s. Your info about WPVI is correct. They also carried GMA's forebear AM America. WKBS was the usual go-to secondary for ABC in the 1970s, though WTAF and WPHL would pitch in occasionally early on. Quote In the Summer of 1983, WPVI preempted Loving, Edge Of Night, and Too Close For Comfort. Channel 48 decided to dump ABC rejects that May except for Too Close For Comfort with plans to drop that in the fall (unaware they would instead go dark end of August - that decsion being made July 14). Rejects moved to Channel 29 WTAF for a while and then to WSJT Again, I don't recall 65 carrying any network castoffs, but I dont have access to any TV listings right now, so I'm not going to disagree with you. WTXF carried ABC's 11AM programming (usually sitcom reruns) in the mid-late 1980s. Quote and then to NBC affiliate Channel 40 in Wildwood in the 9 AM hour and 4 PM slot. As an O & O they continued preempting the 11 AM to 1230 hour and a half. Finally when ABC canceled Ryans Hope, Loving began to be run on Channel 6 in 1988. Actually, IIRC WPVI tape-delayed Loving to 11:30 the next day at first, then carrying it live at 12:30 in 1984, when Loving and RH switched timeslots (RH was then tape-delayed until its demise). Quote Beginning in 1992 when ABC gave back the 12 Noon slot, Channel 6 began running 30 minutes of teh Home Show in 92 and then 30 minutes of Mike and Maty (which morphed out of the Home Show and replaced that show anyway). Finally in 1997, they began clearing the entire ABC schedule when the View premiered. I loved the TV listings for the 90-minute version of Home (which ran on ABC from 11-12:30). WPVI would only carry the 11:30 portion, so the listings would show "joined in progress left in progress". Smiley WPVI did the Saturday 7AM tape-delay from the early 1980s right up until the beginning of the Disney era. Usually, the 11AM-1PM block was cut, and many shows (ex. "Little Rosey", "What-AMess") never made to Philadelphia. Channel 6 most of the time from the mid 80's to the Disney era cleared the entire Saturday Morning lineup. Running it on tape delay a wwek behind from 630-8 AM. Sometimes a show or so was preempted. Weekend Special often still aired at 1230. At one point they moved Al Alberts to

Saturday at 11 AM with Perspective at Noon and Weekend Special at 1230. The other hour and a half ran early once Captain Noah stopped altogether. I looked through some old listings and 65 did not carry any castoffs. NBC ones aired on Channel 17. ABC ones aired on Channel 48. Once 48 went dark, Channel 29 carried most of the castoffs. By 1986, 29 was running only a couple NBC rejects. Channel 40 the NBC affilaite for Cape May area carried on all the cable systems ran ABC castoffs at 9 AM and again at 4 PM. They cleared NBC's entire schedule. About Westinghouse, in 1994. NBC wanted to keep KYW as their affiliate BUT with a NO PREEMPTION agreement. WBZ TV would also be in that deal. That way CBS could keep Channel 10. But in the end after CBS got no preemption deals for KPIX and KDKA TV beginning the fall of 95; CBS determined they would also like WBZ TV and WJZ Baltimore. Those flips occurred New years of 95 also with a NO preemption agreement. KYW TV took longer because CBS had to sell Channel 10. But a few weeks before the affiliation shift took place in Philadelphia, CBS decided to merge with Westinghouse anyway. Actually no preemption deals did not have any real legal ground because that would then mean the networks would control the affiliates and not the station owners and the FCC laws before 1984 did not allow an owner or company to control more than 7 stations and in 1984 no more than 14. With the limit being 14 by 1994, though, CBS was free to control Westinghouse stations without actually owning them. Actually under the original deal Westinghouse would fully own their 5 stations as always and CBS would own WCBS TV, KCBS TV, WBBM TV, newly acquired WGPR/WWJ TV, and WCCO TV. Other acquisitions due to swaps which would include KCNC Denver, KUTV Salt lake City, and Channel 4 WFOR (which the intellectual unit was formerly on Channel 6 and WCIX) would be jointly owned by CBS and Westinghouse. This became a moot point in 1996 when the 2 companies completely merged. Once Disney and ABC merged the Capital Cities stations and ABC stations were now run as one company and not seperate ones. Also when Fox bought New World, they ran the New World stations as a seperate company with a distinctly different strategy (evening news on New World stations but not on Fox stations). They did upgrade to better syndicated shows on the New World stations though. By 2002, Fox began putting evening news on their original O & O stations. After selling a group of stations to Local TV LLC several years back, the way Fox runs their original stations and former New World stations has blurred. Now every station is run as part of one company. much of this seems due to the fact that Fox is not involved with kids shows on any of their stations anymore. Which market is mostly infomercial happy I like to ask this question to the experts. Which of the 210 DMAs are mostly infomerical happy? Could Greenville, SC DMA #36 be one? Since they air more infomercials than uncleared syndie shows like Ugly Betty, Cash Cab, Wendy Williams (3rd season), Punk'd, Til Death, etc. Feel free to reply. KSHB airs an infomercial after SNL and at 6:30PM on Saturdays after the news, you'd use to never see an infomercial other than 1-6AM on a network affiliate I haven't done a tally of the number or locations of infomercials in my market (Phoenix) but it seems that the weekends are full of them any time the stations aren't carrying network feeds. I recall back in the late-1980s and early-1990s that all four commercial stations in Buffalo would be heavy on the infomercials in late-night and weekends. And that was before the other markets started doing the same.

This may surprise, but I say Chicago. The infomercials, especially from low-cost car dealers were everywhere back in 2005-2006. Some were actually quite entertaining, but they were everywhere on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Not sure if they still exist, as I have moved out of the area, but they were indeed part of the tv culture in the mid-2000's. Some of those infomercials still exist on WGN-TV during the overnight hours, & anytime on WJYS 62.1 or 62.4. Agreed. Now that the TV season is over, I can expect KPHO & KPNX to occasionally run infomercials during the 7-8pm hour on the weekends. Sometimes KIRO 7 airs an hour of paid programs between 7 and 8pm on Saturday nights, preempting Entertainment Tonight Weekend. They also air an hour of infomercials between 3 and 4pm on Sat before Sports Stars of Tomorrow at 4, and anytime Sat/Sun where there is no sports pretty much between 11am and 4pm. KSTW and KONG also air a good amount of infomercials on weekends, and KONG has infomercials between 10 and 1 on weekdays except for Joyce Meyer at noon. -crainbebo Sometimes KIRO 7 airs an hour of paid programs between 7 and 8pm on Saturday nights, preempting Entertainment Tonight Weekend. They also air an hour of infomercials between 3 and 4pm on Sat before Sports Stars of Tomorrow at 4, and anytime Sat/Sun where there is no sports pretty much between 11am and 4pm. KSTW and KONG also air a good amount of infomercials on weekends, and KONG has infomercials between 10 and 1 on weekdays except for Joyce Meyer at noon. -crainbebo One of the Phoenix-area independents (KAZT) airs no entertainment programming on Sundays at all and hasn't done so since 2003. Just infomercials and paid religious programs (many of them from local churches). Their subchannels (Me-TV and RTV) take care of their Sunday entertainment programming. I've seen infomercials during weekend prime time on both WICU (NBC) and WJET (ABC) in Erie, PA. I've also seen the odd infomercial during weekend prime time on Detroit's WDIV. One was a full half-hour infomercial for that stations' new daytime fall lineup, which had changed because Dr. Phil moved over to WWJ. Also these infomercials for things like exercise equipment and Time Life collections or are these infomercials disguised as news for things like local grocery stores or hospitals. Someone else here mentioned Michael Moore's TV National being pre-empted in Phoenix for a local hospital infomercial. Will someone explain to me the economics of infomercials? They're basically unwatchable and generate ratings too small to measure for Nielsen--so how do they hold even enough viewership to generate the calls and orders needed to pay for themselves, much less generate the sales to make profits for the sponsors?

Infomercials generate $, why spend $ on programs during little viewed hours when you might be able to make small profit from an infomercial To expand on that it really is a win-win. The stations make a little revenue in time slots they ordinarilly would not. The sponsor gets a lot of time at bargain rates. Don't get me wrong, I won't watch, but I do understand their appeal on both sides. SHOWS THAT TRANSITIONED TO COLOR, WHICH HAVE THE LEAST B&W EPISODES On Me-TV they aired the first color LOST IN SPACE this evening. WOW it was like night and day.....big difference. Wikipedia says the entire first season (29 episodes) were in black and white. What other programs have a limited number of B&W episodes (I'd guess most are from the early to mid 60's)? I couldn't tell you which show had the fewest B&W shows compared to color ones, but I wonder if the prize for the lowest *ratio* of B&W shows to color shows would go to "Gomer Pyle USMC" roughly 1 B&W episode to every 4 color. I think we are only talking about primetime here; daytime can really be a mixed bag here. cd If you go the other way, there's 12 O'Clock High (ABC) with two full seasons ('64-'65 and '65-'66) in B&W and the final half-season (fall '66) with 17 in color. Same scenario--how about Ozzie & Harriet (ABC) with 435 episodes and only the last season ('65-'66, 26 episodes) in color. Was thinking of bringing up Ozzie, but then you'd have the "Perry Mason" crowd respond with its 1 lone color episode out of 9 otherwise B&W seasons! There may have been other "experimental" color episodes----oh yeah!! "Hazel" also had 1 B&W season + 4 color, and there was 1 lone color ep in their otherwise B&W '61-62 season. 'Course, if you count pilot eps, "Get Smart" had a B&W pilot + 5 color seasons. I just remembered another one: Didn't "I Dream of Jeannie" also have 1 B&W + 4 color seasons? (I see on Wiki, yes it did.) cd In the fall of 1965, the first Hogan's Heroes (CBS) was shot in B&W, with all other episodes in color. ...of the 48 episodes produced of Branded, 13 were black&white, all from the mixed first (1964-65) season. A three-part story, "The Mission," had been produced in color that first season and then released as a theatrical feature film in Europe in 1966 under the title Broken Sabre... Get Smart: Pilot was in B &W the rest in color. Didn't "Wild Wild West" have 1 b&w and 3 color seasons? Likewise, "Bewitched" had 2 b&w and 6 color seasons, and "The Beverly Hillbillies" had 3 b&w and 6 color seasons.

The Lucy Show - 1 B&W, 5 color Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea - 1 B&W, 3 color OTOH: The Fugitive - 3 B&W, 1 color Combat - 4 B&W, 1 color How about long-running shows where the B&W seasons are never or very rarely shown in syndicated reruns? Gunsmoke - 11 B&W seasons, 9 color seasons My Three Sons - 5 B&W, 7 color Petticoat Junction - 2 B&W, 5 color Ah, a technicality! This is true, but CBS had no color facilities (for this I am not counting their 1950s standard) until the '65 season. Apparently, Lucy saw the value in reruns in 1963 and decided to film in color from that point on. So....for rerun purposes, yes "The Lucy Show" might have the least ratio (in full seasons, that is), B&W-to-color; but as a primetime CBS series*, it was 3 B&W seasons, 3 color! Good input here! [*Edit: I do remember CBS rerunning the Lucy Show daily, and the 1963-65 shows were indeed in color; in fact, as our local Miami CBS station didn't run it, our ABC station grabbed it for daytime! This was around 1969.] cd The first 2 seasons of Bewitched were in B&W, while the remaining 6 seasons were in color. The first 2 seasons of Bewitched have since been colorized, & some stations air those episodes, rather than the original B&W episodes. As for I Dream of Jeannie; the only reason that show was in B&W for the first season, was because the production company (Screen Gems), didn't think the show would last more than 1 season, & didn't want to spend the money to film it in color. I wonder if that was the same same reason Screen Gems chose to film Bewitched in B&W as well, though that show was on ABC, while I Dream of Jeannie was on NBC. There was another reason. The production staff wasn't sure if the special effects would work as well in color--until someone came along with the idea of Jeannie producing different colors of 'genie smoke' to match her moods. ...ABC picked up American rights to The Avengers only because Associated British promised to switch production from videotape/kinescope to film and, eventually, colour (even though commercial TV in the UK wouldn't have colour capacity for another three years). Of the three seasons ABC carried The Avengers, it was shown here in black&white from March to December 1966, and the remainder of the ABC run (until May 1969) were in colour... GILLIGAN'S ISLAND The 1st season was B&W (36 episodes) but were later colorized for some syndication. 2nd and 3rd seasons (62 episodes) were in color. F-TROOP 1st season B&W (34 episodes). Season 2 was in color. DANIEL BOONE 1st season B&W. All others were in color.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was another show that was in B&W for its first season ('64-65) only; the remaining two and a half seasons were in color--as was the entire run of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (which coincided with Man's third season ['66-67]). I think Bonanza was filmed in color from day one, 1959. Very unusual for those days. That's ABC you're thinking of. CBS had color capabilities (in fact, they started colorcasting using NTSC right after that system won the color war and was authorized); they just didn't use color very much, save for some movies and the occasional special, until the mid-60's. In fact, Ed Reitan's website quotes a technician of that era as saying that they had a devil of a time aligning and tweaking their color equipment for those sporadic colorcasts, because it would sit cold and idle for long stretches of time. I think I've told this before, but the reason "F Troop" didn't go to a third season was because the show went a few thousand dollars over budget with the switch to color, and Jack Warner (who never wanted to film his shows in color in the first place) asked ABC to cancel the show. A few years earlier, Bill Orr (Warner's son-in-law and head of Warner's television division) had suggested they film "Maverick," "Cheyenne," "77 Sunset Strip," "Hawaiian Eye," "Surfside 6," and the rest of the studio's Westerns and detective shows in color. Our shows are on ABC and they don't have color, argued Warner. Sure, but years from now, when these shows are in syndication, they'll seem like new because we can show them in color, Orr responded. Warner won the argument; "Maverick" had a small syndication in the '70s (perhaps because of James Garner's popularity on "The Rockford Files") but only in the last couple of years have the Westerns (specifically, "Maverick," "Cheyenne," and "Lawman") been popping up on the Starz Westerns channel, and I think some of the detective shows aired on one of the nostalgia channels before that. And don't correct me and add "Wagon Train" and "The Virginian" to the list of old TV Westerns airing on Starz; they were produced at Universal; likewise, CBS owned "Gunsmoke" and "Have Gun, Will Travel," all of which also air on Starz. Well, what shows/specials did CBS run pre-1965 using NTSC? I'm curious now; I cannot think of one show. I am sure that Lucy must have wanted her show in color. cd Maverick, at least in Cleveland, was shown for years, all through the 70's to at least the mid-80's, first on WUAB/43 and later on WOIO/19 in their pre-Fox years. It may have been on WBNX/55 after that as well. I'm pretty sure it was on WUAB at least a couple of years before the Rockford Files premiered. Further to this, weren't a number of Red Skelton's shows on CBS colorcast in the pre-'65 era? ...indeed, they were, although only black&white kinescopes of most of those color broadcasts survive... ^ I didn't know that about Red. Are there dates-of-broadcast listed? because I could look at the (now defunct) local paper's archives and see if our station broadcast in color. I believe I have seen an ad from the CBS affiliate trumpeting color....but that had to have been using the old standard. (Or maybe Red's shows used the old standard.) cd It would have been mid-late 50's (our PBS station ran some of these Skelton kinescopes few years back, with the "in color" announcement). It would have to have been NTSC, as the old CBS

mechanical system was long dead by this time. The only one that comes to mind is the annual broadcast of "The Wizard of Oz," which was colorcast from its first run in 1956. As for Lucy, I can only assume that CBS simply had a policy of not routinely colorcasting sitcoms and other series. The decision to begin producing the show in color was Lucy's, not CBS's idea or request. Even though color was still rare on the network, Lucy and her people presciently realized that color was about to take off, and were looking down the road towards syndication, figuring the show woulld be a more valuable future commodity in color. Again, once NTSC won the battle, CBS immediately, though very sporadically, began using the system. They just weren't as gung ho about it as NBC over the next decade, probably due in part to some long-lasting "sour grapes" over losing the color war. Maybe not totally into this thread, but here's an interesting twist. Here's one show that started in black and white in it's first season (1961), went to color for the next two seasons (1962-1964), changed networks from the Peacock to the "Eye" (1965) and returned to black and white on the "Eye" network. I know, it's too easy. It was "The Joey Bishop Show", the sit-com (not to be confused with variety version of "The Joey Bishop Show" on ABC from 1967-1969). The show started on NBC in 1961 in black and white. It went to color in 1962 for the next two full-seasons. Moved to CBS in the fall of 1964 and went back to black and white for the last season. I don't know of any other show that changed from black and white, to color and back to black and white once again. CBS was still a predominately black and white network at the time (due to the losing the "color battle" with NBC/NTSC a few years earlier. A little sour grapes feelings at the "Eye", for sure.). Another show B&W-to-color-and-back was the Bill Cullen version of "The Price Is Right," but again another technicality, in the sense that not all Cullen TPIR's on NBC were in color---I think I read that all the nighttime ones were. I'd like to see *one* color ep! When ABC took TPIR from NBC, gone also was Don Pardo as announcer, and Johnny Gilbert or Jack Clark took those reins. The original "Concentration" (my fave all time game show, when they had 30 squares) was B&W until late 1966, except for one 1961 prime time summer run in color. I read that Norm Blumenthal, who made all the puzzles, did not want color, because that would make the rebus puzzles easier. I have seen pictures of the '61 color show, and they kept the rebuses (rebi?) monochrome/light pink. I believe they did the same, when they finally went to color to stay. [I sure wish there would be more original Concentration shows out there unearthed---YouTube has a few, and they were new to me, anyway! The 1969 Tournament of Champions show on YT is definitely a keeper!] Anyway, what was the title of this thread again? Wink Sorry! cd Also in this type of flip-flop, Wagon Train. The first six (one-hour) seasons in B&W (on NBC, then ABC)...the ninety-minute season seven in color on ABC...then the final season eight on ABC reverted back to an hour, and to B&W. While this doesnt really have to do with the thread, exactly, I've been reading up on an interesting series.."Norby"(January-April 1955) with David Wayne and Joan Lorring..The show concerned a meek banker (Wayne) that suddenly is promoted to an important office at the bank..Created and

Produced by David Swift (Mr. Peepers)..The show at the insistence of sponsor Eastman Kodak, was filmed on Kodak Color TV film and was also filmed on location. NBC scheduled it at 7PM ET Wednesday Nights..Kodak found that filming in color was too expensive and the show only lasted 13 weeks..Here is a link to the opening of "Norby", which was considered the first regular prime time network series in color.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L3YlmN9R4w Other factors behind the show's demise..The time slot..The show was too much like Mr. Peepers, which TV was getting away from that style of comedy..The Museum of Broadcast Communications (museum.tv) has a nearly one hour film including the "Pitch Reel: for Norby and the first episode in their collection..Sign up and one can see/hear parts of the collection, which has quite a few rarities.. How about one in reverse? The first pilot for The Munsters was in color, but when the series went on the air it was in black & white. I'd say it would be tough to beat "What's My Line?"...16 1/2 seasons black and white, 1 final season in color. As to the one color episode of Perry Mason mentioned back in reply #3, "The Case of the Twice Told Twist" (orig. telecast 02/27/66) will be shown on MeTV this coming Friday night May 4, at 11:30/10:30. MeTV's program schedule does state it will air in color. And from 35mm, too! Smiley (I just threw that one in.) Thanx for the info! I noticed that AntennaTV had the one lone color "Hazel" from Season 1 this afternoon. Had to record it; couldn't stay home. cd Was that a pilot as well? No! It was a special episode aired during the season (Nov 1961?) and the title was something like "What'll We Be Watching?" and I believe it had to do w/ the family buying a new color TV. I missed the prolog (wasn't expecting that ep to come up), but generally the plot is not ruined by it. They air back-to-back "Hazel"s, & the prior one was in B&W. See www.tv.com (all shows - Hazel) for more info. cd This is interesting. According to this page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0598526/trivia "RCA was NBC's parent company and arranged for all shows to be in color on this date to promote sales of color televisions." I wonder if this was just in prime time, or if it was all day, and also if any other shows were promoting buying color TVs in some way. Is there a chance someone might have a retro schedule for this day? Well, YouTube has practically everything. Smiley It's nice to view it on my regular TV tho'. I'll look at the YouTube sometime later....wondering if the 1957-1962 NBC Peacock fanfare

preceded it! (BTW I've yet to see the NBC 1960 "Peter Pan" w/ Mary Martin with the Peacock to start.) As to the date of broadcast, I am sure that this was primetime only. Many game shows and soaps didn't have color cameras at the time. cd I scanned over a Cleveland Plain Dealer TV listing for that date..The KYW-TV 3 primetime listings for that night were: 7:30 The Outlaws (BW) 8:30 Dr. Kildare (BW) 9:30 Hazel (C) 10PM Sing Along With Mitch (C) which correlated with the NBC Prime Time Schedule for 1961-62. Thanks for the info Tim and Oldiesfan6479. I'd tend to believe the Plain Dealer listing over the IMDB post, unless there can be any further proof one way or the other. Was Sing Along with Mitch normally in color at that time? The conventional wisdom is that during the original NBC run of DRAGNET, the only color episode was "The Big Little Jesus" (currently available only in B&W from various public domain merchants). And yet, throughout the series' entire final season (1958-59), TV GUIDE listed DRAGNET as being in color. If so, why aren't any of THESE episodes available in color? And if not, why did TV GUIDE say so and continue saying so? Bill Paley must've had some ego to hold such an anti-NTSC grudge. Roll Eyes Did any power players prominent in the TV or entertainment industries in the era of "experimental" colorcasts believe that color TV would never graduate beyond the "experimental" phase, even as of, say 2012? ixnay "Bill Paley must've had some ego to hold such an anti-NTSC grudge." Not early on...he actually, in 1954, had about as much color programming on at least his O&Os as NBC. Trouble is, it cost more to produce and didn't get either extra ad revenue or extra viewing, so it wasn't worth it. And CBS was gradually getting out of the TV-making business, and was starting even to get out of the parts business. So they didn't have the motivation to push color and eat the cost that NBC did, given its color TV-making parent company, RCA. It was a matter of deciding the investment wasn't going to provide a return any time soon. So Paley and the CBS brain trust opted to put more money into programming and stars while NBC, with the backing and urging of RCA, kept color TV alive through some pretty lean and losing early years between 1955 and the early 60s. Who was right? You could say NBC, because color did eventually take over. Or you could just as easily say CBS, since they went to the top of the Nielsen heap and stayed there through the 50s and 60s WITHOUT spending more for colorcasting, but were ready to jump back into it in the mid-60s when color set ownership reached a critical mass and it started to be a plus to colorcast. ABC accidentally timed it well too, since they only had the money to do a lot of colorcasting at the precise moment in 1963-65 when their affiliate lineup really grew and their ratings did likewise. If only Leave It To Beaver would have lasted a couple more years, perhaps we would have seen

"The Beaver" in color. I think "The Cisco Kid" was filmed in color from the get-go, but originally released to stations in B&W. Walter Schwimmer bought it in the '60s and reisssued the series in color. I don't know if Ziv issued any color Cisco Kid prints to stations equipped for color in the '50s. Maybe someone has already mentioned this, but what about "The Adventures of Superman"? B&W first few seasons then the rest shot in color even though most people (at the time) didn't own color television sets or they were not even built yet. Singer Steve Lawrence had a short-lived (13 weeks) musical variety show on CBS in the Fall of 1965. It's my understanding that the show began in black-and-white (four or five weeks?), but was being taped in color by the time it's short run ended. CBS made the decision that they would hold off on full color until other broadcast manufactures started to produce color equipment. CBS had converted WCAU-TV in Philly to color using RCA cameras and while film looked OK, the TK-42 studio camera had a washed out look. CBS converted Studio 50 to color using at first Marconi cameras but they also had a washed out look. Then Norelco came out with the plumbicon camera in late 1964 and CBS was all in. http://www.eyesofageneration.com/Norelco_Philips_Gallery.php The Norelco's were so much sharper that NBC even bought them for use in sports and by 1969 RCA had developed the TK-44 which was a Norelco clone. From my understanding, as far as color was concerned, Studio 50 first had Norelco PC-60's when the network began to go color in 1965, then PC-70's, then in 1968 they got the Marconi Mark VII's which remained there through the early 1970's. While WCBS-TV in New York had the PC-70's in their studios (under the same roof as the Broadcast Center on West 57th), apart from WCAU which, as you said, acquired the TK-42, the other three O&O's of the time (WBBM-TV Chicago, KNXT Los Angeles and KMOX-TV St. Louis) all went with the Mark VII's. By 1976-77, four of the O&O's (with the exception, of course, of WCBS) replaced the earlier color cameras with ThomsonCSF TTV-1518's. I may've noted this earlier either here or on other threads, but WBBM, WCAU, KMOX and KNXT all went with RCA TK-27 film chains - while WCBS, again sharing the same facilities as CBS network, used General Electric PE-240 chains. It should be noted that the early production model PC-70's had the same "round applied handles" as the earlier PC-60's - the only thing distinguishing one from the other was the huge metal "Norelco" logo plate on each of the side "belts" on the PC-70's, whereas PC-60's had a small black Norelco logo next to the Philips logo on a stainless-steel "belt." Specifics aside, besides the picture produced, the fact that this camera was produced by "anybody but RCA" was what finally got the network "in" to the color sweepstakes of the mid-'60's. I had the Studio 50 cameras mixed up - I worked with the Mark VII's in Boston and they were hard to register and match. The reason I thought the Marconi's were first was that by 1973 when Pyramid was being taped at Studio 50 they were Norelco's.

The GE film chains were top notch but the 250 studio/field camera while fine in a studio environment was a nightmare for sport remotes. WOR-TV used them at MSG and Shea and WSBK-Boston used them at Fenway Park and Boston Garden. Sounds like Studio 50 reverted to Norelco by the time The $10,000 Pyramid first started, from what you're saying. As for the PE-250 cameras, I've seen some clips of Joe Franklin's show from the 1968-76 period, and the color seemed to be better than the same cameras as used pre-1975 by WPIX in New York (and that's just on the studio setups - it's possible as you indicated that on remotes it was a you-know-what). WOR had nine PE-250's - six at Shea and three at their Broadway studios for many years starting in late 1967 (part of a 16-camera order put in by RKO in 1966 - five cameras went to WNAC-TV Boston, from my recollection, and two to WHBQ-TV in Memphis). Which Boston station would've had Mark VII's as their main camera - WGBH, I suppose? Or WKBG / WLVI? And as for film chains, I was apprised that of the Boston stations, WSBK and WNAC had GE PE-24 and/or 240's while the first WHDH had RCA TK-26's, and WBZ and WLVI had TK-27's. Wonder if you'd know what was such status with WGBH or WCVB after the latter station took the Channel 5 spot after WHDH (I) was kicked off in 1972. WGBH and the brief WXPO had the Mark VII's. WCVB had an Ampex-Norelco package -studio cameras were PC-100A's. WKBG was all RCA - either 42's or 43's WNAC's PE-250's were by far the best looking color studio cameras in the market until WCVB came along. WSBK finally scrapped the GE's around 1976 - and went with TK-47's. If you look on You Tube at Bruins clips in the early 70's you can see how bad the GE's looked at Boston Garden for hockey. They tried to say it was the Garden lighting but CBS had no problems with their Norelcos there. When WHDH-TV first went on they went whole hog with RCA gear - it was rumored that if they did so NBC would affiliate with them to get away from Group W's pre-emptions but they never had the license free and clear so NBC didn't jump. CBS finally was so fed up with WNAC-TV they moved to CBS. Come 1972 since WCVB said they would preempt often CBS went back to WNAC-TV. LOCAL STATIONS THAT CARRIED YOUR PRO-BASEBALL TEAM OVER THE YEARS (other than ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX network games) Braves in Atlanta (wikipedia) 1965 they moved from Milwaukee 1966-1972 WSB 2 (also syndicated) 1973-1976 WTCG 17 (Turner buys WJRJ 17 1970) 1977-2007 WTCG/WTBS 17 (Superstation),TBS 2007-NOW WTBS/WPCH 17 (fall of '07) (local, Super for Canada) Sports South 2000- (contract ends in 2012) FSN 1991-2012 (contract ends in 2012) airs outside the Atlanta area Comcast 2008-2010 outside Atlanta area

Ok, now who can do New York?Huh?? Chicago Cubs WBKB/4 (1946-51)* WENR-TV/7 (1948) WGN-TV/9 (1948 to present) WCIU-TV/26 (2000-present) * 1946-51 is documented, although I have heard stories from my family and others that WBKB televised at least one of the 1945 World Series games that were played at Wrigley Field (Games 47). WGN wasn't awarded exclusive rights to the Cubs until 1952. Link: JustOneBadCentury.com Link: Cubs Broadcast History, Page 6 Chicago White Sox WGN-TV/9 (1948-1967, 1981, 1990-Present) WCIU-TV/26 (2000-Present) WFLD/32 (1968-1972, 1982-1989) WSNS/44 (1973-1980, produced by WGN-TV) I have no information about any Sox games that might have aired on other stations prior to 1952. AFAIK, WGN had exclusive rights to the Sox from the beginning, and no Sox games were ever televised prior to WGN-TV's signing on in 1948. The Pittsburgh Pirates were on WENS-TV 16 back in the 1950's. That station was partly owned by long time Pirates' play-by-play broadcaster Bob Prince. After that station went dark in 1957 they moved to KDKA-TV 2, where they remained until 1994. Then they moved to WPXI-TV 11 for a couple of years, but have been basically cable-only via the local RSN since the late 90's. The move from KDKA was supposedly prompted by pressure from CBS about the frequent pre-emptions of CBS programming. This was pretty much set in stone once CBS and Westinghouse became one and the same. The Pirates of the 1950's were a struggling last-place team known as the Rickey-Dinks (after General Manager Branch Rickey, who traded away star Ralph Kiner and slashed their payroll). Clearly the team was not good enough to save the struggling UHF signal of WENS. The Arizona Diamondbacks were on KTVK channel 3 from its inception in 1998 through 2007(?) when Diamondback games began to air exclusively on FOX Sports Arizona in 2008. I question through 2007 because I don't remember if Channel 3 stopped airing games before 2007. I don't know if it was the D-Backs decision to go exclusive on cable or none of the Phoenix stations didn't want to air the games, but it's disappointing that there isn't a local broadcast presence. Even the New York Yankees, who have their own network, still show a handful of games on WWOR channel 9. ...original Spanish-language telecasts of Diamondbacks games also appeared on KPHE-LP/44 from 2007 thru 2009... Seattle Mariners here started [IIRC] on KSTW 11, then moved to KIRO 7 [station in 1995 when the Mariners won the AL West], then KSTW again [Fox Sports Northwest also in the mix], and now it is exclusively on Root Sports. -crainbebo

SF Giants on KTVU from 1958-2007; KNTV(NBC Bay Area) since 2008(although KTVU still holds a small ownership stake in the team). I know that for many years, the Yankees were always on WPIX-TV and the Mets were on WWORTV. Then the Yankees were on WCBS-TV for a couple of seasons. Today, the Yankees and Mets local TV games air on WWOR-TV and WPIX-TV, respectively. Here in Hartford/New Haven, I can't remember anybody airing the Yankees games before the old WTWS-TV channel 26 of New London did. Then and now, some of the Mets games have been aired by both the old WTXX-TV (IND) and today's WCCT-TV (CW) channel 20 of Waterbury/Hartford. The WWOR-TV Yankees games now air on WCTX-TV (MY) channel 59 of New Haven. I seem to remember the WCBS-TV airings of the Yankees a few years ago being carried by WFSB-TV (CBS) channel 3 of Hartford. Lastly, back when WSBK-TV channel 38 of Boston carried the Red Sox, a few games would air on WVIT-TV (NBC) channel 30 of New Britain/Hartford. The previously-mentioned WTXX-TV channel 20 even aired their games for a short time. I believe the Red Sox were already off of WSBK-TV by then, either on channel 25 (FOX) or even channel 68 (then an independent, now a ION affiliate). Yankees TV coverage has a very spotty history in the Hartford/New Haven market. Channel 18 WHCT carried selected Yankee games from 1971 - 1973 (weekends & occasional weeknights). The old Channel 20 WATR in Waterbury carried Sunday afternoon Yankee games in 1974 & 1975. Channel 3 WFSB also carried selected Yankee games around 1980, as well. Prior to WTXX airing Met games, Mets weekend games were carried on Channel 8 WTNH from 1970 - 1974. Prior to Channel 30 WVIT airing the Red Sox, Channel 3 WFSB picked up selected games from 1977 - 1979. Red Sox telecasts were also available in the Hartford area on Channel 22 WWLP in Springfield, MA from the 50s until 1989, when the telecasts switched to Channel 40 WGGB. Channel 8 in New Haven also carried the Sox from 1967 to 1969. Philadelphia Phillies: 1948: WPTZ-TV and WCAU-TV 1949-54: WPTZ-TV, WCAU-TV and WFIL-TV 1955: WPTZ-TV and WCAU-TV 1956-57: WRCV-TV and WFIL-TV 1958: WRCV-TV and WVUE-TV 1959-70: WFIL-TV 1971-80: WPHL-TV 1981-82: WPHL-TV and PRISM 1983-92: WTAF/WTXF-TV and PRISM 1993-97: WPHL-TV and PRISM 1998: WPHL-TV and Comcast SportsNet 1999-2008: WPSG-TV and Comcast SportsNet 2009-Current: WPHL-TV and Comcast SportsNet Dick Clark wrote in his book "Rock Roll & Remember" that in his pre-Bandstand days as a WFIL staff announcer, one of his duties during the 7th inning stretch was a live on-air sampling of the beer sponsor's product. I don't recall the exact details, but apparently the contract called for a live repeat of the commercial at pre-determined intervals if the game went into extra innings. According to Clark, this made for some very interesting broadcasting if the game ran especially long! Cleveland Indians:

Not sure before the 70's. 1970's - WJW/8 (then CBS), often pre-empting CBS programming (or bumping it to indie WUAB/43). 1980-2002 - WUAB/43 (indie, later UPN) 2003-2006 - No OTA games, cable only. 2007-present - WKYC/3 (NBC - approx 20 games per year, the rest on cable) often pre-empting NBC programming (or delaying to late nights). In Boston, for the Red Sox, in no particular order (someone else can look up the exact sequence Grin ): WSBK-TV38 (2 tours of duty..75-95 and 2003-05) WABU-68 WFXT-Fox25 WBZ-TV4 (Friday night baseball only for a couple years with Sean McDonough and Remdawg) and, of course, New England Sports Network (NESN) where all non-network Sox games now air. Complete Cleveland Indians TV History: 1948-49 WEWS-TV 5 1950-55 WXEL-9 (Changed to 8 for the 1954 season) 1956-60 WEWS-5 1961-79 WJW-TV 8 1980-2001 WUAB-43 2002-2005 No Broadcast TV 2006-Present WKYC-3 (20 select games, simulcast with STO) Cable 1982 TEN TV 1983 The Sports Exchange (Both failed local sports networks) 1990-1997 SportsChannel Ohio 1998-2005 Fox Sports Ohio (name change of SportsChannel) 2006-Present SportsTime Ohio ...who carried the Seattle Pilots?... If you can believe Wiki, radio was KVI 570 and TV was "none." There was a recent post on the506.com Sports Broadcasting Forums(some people from here frequent that site, too) which mentioned the Pilots demanded too much money for TV rights, and so there was no TV deal..aside from a single telecast in September, from Boston(not sure which station carried it). Part of their problem was that the planned expansion of Sicks Stadium to Major-League size was never completed, due to union problems, cost overruns and rainy Seattle weather. They were never able to seat more than 16,000 at any point during the season....woefully undersized for a Major League team. The management apparently tried to compensate by overreaching on the TV deal and it backfired on them. If you want to see rare footage of the Pilots, get a copy of "Seattle Pilots - Short Flight Into History". I have it and highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Seattle-Pilots-Short-Flight-History/dp/B004X2JO9E/ref=sr_1_1? s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1306620271&sr=1-1 And here's a short news clip from 1977 mentioning the legal problems with the Kingdome (hard to believe that stadium is now history): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPYtiTJCYMY As for the Red Sox, the "Impossible to Forget" DVD has the next-to-last game from the 1967 season (minus open and close and commercials). It's interesting to see, and is the oldest colorcast of a complete MLB game in existance. http://www.amazon.com/Impossible-Forget-The-Story-Boston/dp/B000PC1PAM Very good website on the history of the Pilots: Includes rare radio clips with Jimmy Dudley and Bill Schonely:Dudley had been radio announcer for the Indians from the 40's to the 60's and worked in TV in Cleveland..Schonely became the first and best known voice of the NBA Portland Trailblazers.. http://seattlepilots.com/ The old WHDH-5 did not sign-on until November, 1957, after the 1957 baseball season had ended. WBZ-4 and the old WNAC-7 shared Boston Red Sox TV games from 1948 through 1954; from 1955 through 1957, WBZ alone aired the games. The rights were held by the old WHDH-850, which didn't have a TV station at the time, and thus, initially split the TV schedule between WNAC and WBZ to avoid favoritism. In the early years, almost all home games were televised. The old Boston Braves were seen on both WBZ and WNAC in 1948 and 1949; from 1950 until the team left town after the 1952 season, the Braves set-up their own TV/radio package (breaking away from WHDH Radio, which had carried home games of both teams from 1947 to 1949). From 1950 through 1952, WBZ had all the Braves' TV games (in addition to half of the Red Sox TV schedule). The old WNAC-1260 replaced WHDH as the Braves' radio flagship; presumably the New Englandwide Yankee Network also carried the Braves from 1950-52. The 1950 season was the first time that every game, home and away, of both the Braves and Red Sox were broadcast on radio in Boston, since the Red Sox stayed on WHDH (and would through the end of the 1975 regularseason). WNAC Radio wanted to get back into baseball because it (and eventually, the Yankee Network) had been the flagship of both the Sox and Braves (carrying home games of the two teams) between the middle 1920's through 1946. Also, in 2004, WBZ-TV only did a handful of Red Sox games (mostly Sunday afternoons or games against the New York Yankees); WSBK broadcast about 24 of the 30 or so over-the-air TV games that year. The next year, all of the about 30 over-the-air TV games were on WSBK. It is my understanding that the team abandoned over-the-air TV was that they are the majority owner of the New England Sports Network (NESN), and that by 2006, the team discovered that they could make more money by keeping the 30 games that had been sold to WBZ/WSBK than sell-off the rights to 30 games a year for over-the-air TV. When WBZ-TV took over the Red Sox in 1972 they took control of KYW's new remote truck.

Minnesota Twins 1961-1972: WTCN (Ind.) 1973-1974: WCCO (CBS) 1975-1978: WTCN (Ind.) 1979-1988: KMSP (ABC, then Ind., then Fox, then Ind.) 1989-1993: WCCO (CBS)/KITN (Fox) 1994-1997: WCCO (CBS)/KLGT (Ind., then WB) 1998-2003: KMSP (UPN, then Fox) 2004-2005: KSTC (Ind.) 2006-2010: WFTC (MyNet) I didn't include the cable efforts. I'm a little murky on when KITN (now WFTC) dropped the package that went to KLGT. Your mileage may vary. According to newspaper reports at the time, the Pilots were trying to sell a 20-game package at $15,000 per game. No one took the offer, so they dropped their price to $5,000. Another justification given by the stations was that interest in the team was so low, a preemption of network programming to air a Pilots game would have alienated too many viewers. KING-TV aired one road game from Detroit on a Sunday morning, August 31. Announcers were Joe Daggett, who called games for the minor-league Seattle Totems hockey team (and was later the sports anchor at WISTV in Columbia, S.C.), and Rod Belcher, KING-TV sports director. The game involving the Red Sox was an NBC Game of the Week that was blacked out in Seattle due to poor attendance. The NBC game from Seattle would be interesting to see, if only for the awkward camera positions. When Sicks' Stadium was expanded for the Pilots, the baseline camera wells were replaced by seating. Photographers were relegated to the stadium roof. Any action photos of the Pilots at home are instantly recognizable because they were taken at an extremely sharp overhead angle. KING was also the Mariners' television outlet for the scant number of games that aired their first five seasons, with KSTW taking over in 1982. Going back to the heyday of Pacific Coast League baseball, the Seattle Rainiers made their TV debut on KRSC-TV (now KING) on April 12, 1949, and stayed on Channel 5 through 1953. (The microwave connection with the game failed midway through that first broadcast, by the way.) No games were televised in 1954. Fledgling Tacoma independent station KTVW (now KCPQ) televised every Rainiers home game during their 1955 championship season and the two following years. As KTNT-TV (now KSTW) lost its CBS affiliation (for the first of three times) to KIRO-TV in 1958, it bulked up its schedule by adding Rainiers home games, which Channel 11 held through 1964. KTVW aired Tacoma Giants games during their inaugural PCL season in 1960 and then KTNT added them to their sports slate in 1962. The Rainiers became the Seattle Angels in 1965 and games were aired on KING that year and KIRO in 1966. The final two years of Triple-A baseball in Seattle went untelevised except for road games in Tacoma that aired as part of the Cubs' package with KTNT. Apparently the Pilots killed off interest in Tacoma Cubs broadcasts, as they stopped after the 1968 season. It would be interesting to see how other Pacific Coast League teams fared on television, particularly during the mid-'50s, when it was an "Open" classification -- a step higher than Triple-A. Cable 1982 TEN TV 1983 The Sports Exchange (Both failed local sports networks)

I totally forgot about TEN TV! And I can't remember anything about The Sports Exchange. BTW, for out of towners, SportsTime Ohio is commonly owned with the team. T-K wrote: KING-TV aired one road game (of the Seattle Pilots in 1969) from Detroit on a Sunday morning, August 31. Announcers were Joe Daggett, who called games for the minor-league Seattle Totems hockey team (and was later the sports anchor at WIS-TV in Columbia, S.C.), and Rod Belcher, KING-TV sports director. The game involving the Red Sox was an NBC Game of the Week that was blacked out in Seattle due to poor attendance. Actually, from 1966 through 1983, NBC's Baseball Game Of The Week was never televised in the city the game was played in, nor in the visiting team's home market, or on any NBC stations with 50 miles of the two cities whose local teams were involved. As an example, let's say that the NBC "Game Of The Week" one Saturday afternoon in the late 1970's featured two regional games: One (going to most of the network) between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees at Boston's Fenway Park; the other (the "backup game") game being the Chicago Cubs against the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Boston/Yankees game could not be televised on either then-NBC affiliate WBZ-4 Boston or network flagship WNBC-4 New York. Under the "50 mile" rule, NBC affiliate WJAR-10 Providence couldn't carry the game either. However, that game was televised on the respective local TV flagship stations of the time, WSBK38 in Boston and WPIX-11 in New York. The then-Providence area affiliate for WSBK's Red Sox games, WTEV-6 in New Bedford/Providence, also carried the WSBK feed. Likewise, WMAQ-5 and KSD-5 in St. Louis (or other NBC stations within 50 miles of these cities) couldn't televise the Cubs/St. Louis game. They were the ones that carried Boston and the Yankees. But WGN-9 Chicago and KPLR-11 in St. Louis could carry the game. If there was a rainout in Boston, WMAQ, KSD, and any NBC stations within 50 miles of those cities (WNDU-16 South Bend??) would not get any game. Everyone else would get the Cubs and St. Louis. I remember a night in 1970 when WBZ-TV was caught flatfooted over the NBC/MLB rules. Monday, June 22, 1970 Baltimore at Boston was the national game and NBC fed us San Diego at Houston. Houston was used often as the backup game because it was a dome. The game in Houston was over in 1:50 minutes and Jim Simpson said good night from the Astrodome and then black......this is roughly at 10:25 Eastern. Going to Fenway was not an option as AT&T longlines would not even restore the main NBC feed until the game at Fenway ended. We called NBC BOC and they said - sorry you are on your own. We found a 30 minute fill film to get us to 11 and news. Meanwhile the game continues at Fenway. We then asked NBC if they could feed us Carson at 11:30 on the still in place backup game circuit and they said impossible as NY only had 2 copies of the show and they would both run at the same time in case one of the VTR's died. The game at Fenway finally ended and NBC said Carson would start at Midnight but we were on

our own to fill. Somebody in projection said I found a 28 minute fill and we put it on..........it was the second reel of a Tarzan movie. Not a fun night to work in master control. ...what was the situation with the Toronto Blue Jays and the Montreal Expos?... Montreal and Toronto never had local TV as such. The Expos were on CBC for 20 years (19691989) The Blue Jays used both CBC and CTV. In the case of Montreal there were about 60 games total televised each season - half in English the other half in French. In 1984 the Jays started TSN ( both were owned by Labatt ) On the rare occasion that Montreal or Toronto was involved on the main NBC game - the Buffalo and Plattsburgh stations were allowed to beam the games into Toronto and Montreal. The CBC games in turn could be seen in Seattle, Detroit, Buffalo and northern New England. For many years the Red Sox were available on Montreal cable as channel 22 in Vermont was on the Montreal system and they carried the WSBK feed and later WSBK became a superstation in Canada because of baseball and hockey. Sidebar story (with apologies for the slight veer).... On a spring biz trip to Montreal in the mid-90s, I wanted to catch a Cubs-Expos game. My hotel didn't have the channel that was carrying the game. So....I figured my best bet was to go across the freeway to a sports bar. Sure enough....22 TVs there and the game was on. On just ONE of those 22 TVs! Meanwhile the Jays game was on 6 TVs. (This was in West Island....an Englishspeaking part of town). The other 15 TVs had hockey....including minor league games! And yes....during those days when I'd be in Canada 3-4 times each year on business, I got used to sometimes watching...and even listening to...ballgames in French! Philadelphia Phillies: 1948: WPTZ-TV and WCAU-TV 1949-54: WPTZ-TV, WCAU-TV and WFIL-TV 1955: WPTZ-TV and WCAU-TV 1956-57: WRCV-TV and WFIL-TV 1958: WRCV-TV and WVUE-TV 1959-70: WFIL-TV 1971-80: WPHL-TV 1981-82: WPHL-TV and PRISM 1983-92: WTAF/WTXF-TV and PRISM 1993-97: WPHL-TV and PRISM 1998: WPHL-TV and Comcast SportsNet 1999-2008: WPSG-TV and Comcast SportsNet 2009-Current: WPHL-TV and Comcast SportsNet SportsChannel Philadelphia carried Phillies games from 1990-97. Seattle Mariners here started [IIRC] on KSTW 11, then moved to KIRO 7 [station in 1995 when the Mariners won the AL West], then KSTW again [Fox Sports Northwest also in the mix], and now it is exclusively on Root Sports.

-crainbebo Ah yes, the Seattle Mariners, but which station broadcast the Seattle PILOTS ?? Here in the Charleston area we haven't had that many OTA local games air. Recently, the Braves had a 15 or 20 game syndicated package aired on WMMP (UPN) or WTAT (FOX) in '98 and '99. I thought that the 30 or so games of the old Montreal Expos televised in each language annually were the same games, meaning 30 games were televised, both in English and French. I also thought that apart from opening day (and the home opener if the team opened on the road), telecasts for the Expos were on Wednesday nights once hockey playoffs ended along with some holiday games (Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day). SRC ( French ) televised mainly on Sunday afternoons - While some games like Opening Day were dual fed - they tended to split things up. As a Cubs fan on business trips from Chicago during the 90s, I remember a few occasions watching Cubs-Expos in French....on a weekday evening....when that was the only broadcast available. This was in Ontario as well as in Quebec. Public TV Auctions The recent retro-schedule from Eastern Virginia makes me wonder this-- how many areas had (or have) an "auction" type fundraiser for their Public broadcaster? I remember fondly the KTCA Action Auction in all its cheesiness. My favorite memory (and yes I wish I could find it) is one of the local police or fire chiefs -- a very large, manly-man, auctioning off a brassiere. Here's a look at the Twin Cities' "Action Auction" (and I should note that the video on the TPT site is not the easiest to scan through) http://www.mnvideovault.org/index.php?id=7858&select_index=4&popup=yes Wisconsin Public Television and Milwaukee's WMVS both still have them... http://auction.wpt.org http://www.greattvauction.com It was a staple for us at WXXI in Rochester all through the 1970s and early 1980s. Due to limited space at the station's own studios, the auction operated from donated warehouse space in the 1980s, with a complete remote studio setup. The rise of home shopping TV made the broadcast auction redundant, but it lives on for us as an online auction each April. (There's a short on-air preview special, but the rest of the auction's broadcast presence is limited to short promos between shows.) WYIN still runs auctions from time to time. Some of them are live, while others are online. They have to rely on the annual auctions, as they get less pledge dollars than WTTW & WYCC, due to their signal only reaching the southern part of the market. Without the auctions, then they'd be running beg-a-thon programming everyday during regular programming (they already run beg-athon programming after 12:30am every night, just to be on the air 24 hours, ot they'd sign off by 1am latest). New Hampshire Public Television still has an auction:

http://www.nhptv.org/auction/ The "live" auctions were enjoyable to watch during the 70's and 80s. It is a shame that WXXI's management decided to relegate the auction to an online operation. With the mammoth studios WXXI has built over the years during the renovations of the building there is no excuse (for the lack of space) not to return to airing live auctions. Personally I get the feeling that management just doesn't want to be bothered with all the preparation it takes to air a live televised auction; thus the online version to them suffices. Following up on Scott's remarks, and in response to Voice of Reason's, a lot of stations are doing what WXXI does--on-air previews, combined with followup programs on the station's digital subchannels at various times during the auction period, but most of the bidding action and most of the descriptions of items up for bid found on the website. And the financial results are actually MUCH better. The reason for taking most of the auction action off live broadcast TV is the cost--it costs about three or four times as much to sell the same material through live auctions as it does to do it online. Gross volume on a mostly online auction is about the same as the broadcast version, but the savings on overhead (everything from staff OT to administrative expense) amounts to an auction that may be less entertaining to some viewers or to station volunteers, but three to four times as profitable for the station. And let's face it, auctions are fundraisers designed to raise money to do your regular programming for your core mission...so the more you save, the more air time and money there is in hand for regular cultural and informational programming, the service you're in operation to offer people to begin with. We all miss the auction, it was fun, but the current setup, even if it's not as exciting, enables us to do more core programming. On balance it's a good trade that serves the audience better IMHO. The point I was trying to make is that the "fun element" is missing from having a live auction versus a sterile internet auction. Granted it might cost more money to stage a live auction, but that was part of the enjoyment watching these programs. You not only had a bevy of guest auctioneers, but also a studio full of people. This is one reason I prefer watching a TV sit-com taped in front of a live audience versus having laugh-tracts inserted into a program. Also remember the old adage: "You have to spend money in order to make money". Blue Ridge Public Television (Roanoke) had one until the mid 90s. Here is a bit of personal irony. When I worked at WHAM radio in the mid 1970s I received a phone call from someone at WXXI asking if I would agree to be a guest auctioneer. My initial reply was that I didn't get out of work until after 1 a.m. and wouldn't that be too late to make an appearance? The person on the other end of the phone said no. So after work I went down to WXXI's studios. By the time I got to do my part it was after 2 a.m. However the place was still "jumping" with excitement at that hour. The irony is 11 years later when I went to work for WXXI (where I stayed for 14 years) I was never once asked again to participate in the TV auction. Undecided

I remember the old WXXI auctions in the early 70s as being entertaining, but only because WXXI was one of only four channels on the dial and on Saturday night after Carol Burnett it was either the auction or the Frightening Flicker. It's funny to recall now how the production values were shoddy and the station only had B&W cameras, yet it got lots of viewers. It couldn't happen that way now. You are absolutely right. The auctions were far from what would be considered a professional production, but that added to the enjoyment of watching. Former General Manager Bill Pearce and his staff put a lot of time, effort, and work into making those televised auctions successful and entertaining. It didn't take long after Pearce retired that the new regime decided to make changes to the auction to where it currently is now nothing but an after thought. Some may argue that the internet is the way to go because it cost less money. If that's the case then put those boring fundraisers on line and bring back the live auctions. Hope I'm not beng overly redundant here...but the reason auctions ever hit the air anyplace in America in the first place was because back in 1954 KQED-TV in San Francisco almost went dark before an enterprising staffer decided to go out to the local business community and ask them to donate some of their excess stuff to help them sell it on-airto raise quick cash to cover payroll and pay bills. It succeeded not only in keeping the wolf immediately from the door but building a little cash cushion. KQED survived and thrived to this day although I don't believe they do the auction any more, and other cash-strapped public stations soon emulated their example. But that was 58 years ago and this is now. What worked in the 50s when an auction was the most immediate and cost-effective way to reach people and generate both excitement and dollars, is now a real cash burner compared to the same kind of auction carried mostly on line, while the station it benefits can continue just doing what it does best on the air without much interruption. That's the same reason radio on-air membership drives, which used to last the better part of a month every season, are now a lot shorter and less frequent but actually attract more memberships as the drives now present not only an on-air but an on-line component. Having hosted more than a few nights of those old-style TV auctions, I remember what fun they were to do and to watch, and there's part of me that misses that part of it. But times change and it's better to raise the money a more profitable (if less exciting) way, saving the cash we used to spend staging auctions so we can air the news coverage and documentary shows we're now producing out of the same studios with the same people, every day and every week, year round. For the price of the fun we had a couple weeks a year we can now afford to put more public service programming on the air every week and IMHO that's a good trade. Here in Boston, WGBH-2/WGBX-44 began doing an auction in 1966 (WGBX wasn't yet on the air; it signed on in 1967). If my memory serves me correct, it was held to raise funds for converting WGBH to color; it has been held every year since. For most of it's history, the WGBH Auction was a week-long event; but for the last few years, they've run half-hour shows previewing and describing items up for bid, and have only done a livein-studio on-air auction for one day. This year's live-on-air auction was held yesterday (May 31st). INN (Independent Network News) stations: List them here!

We know it was on WPIX and sister stations WGN and KWGN as well as KCOP in Los Angeles (and later KTLA after it was acquired by Tribune) when it started, but what about the other stations that carried INN? Based on the listings posted here as well as our memories, here are some of them: Anchorage--KTBY Fairbanks--KJNP (yes, a religious station!) and later KTVF New Orleans--WGNO Dallas--KTVT Seattle (and Vancouver, B.C.)--KCPQ Phoenix--KNXV Miami--WCIX (now WFOR) Detroit (and Windsor)--WKBD U.S. Virgin Islands--WBNB (as evidenced by this promo: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ElmAMeN7Ido) Boston--WSBK Buffalo (and Toronto)--WUTV Cleveland--WUAB (?) Houston--KHTV (now KIAH) Columbus--WTTE St. Louis--KPLR Philadelphia--WTAF (now WTXF) Norfolk--WYAH (now WGNT) Cincinnati--WXIX Atlanta--WANX (now WGCL) That's all I can think of. Spokane - KAYU Some others: Las Vegas--KVVU San Francisco--KICU San Diego--KUSI Orlando--WOFL Pittsburgh--WPGH Washington, D.C.--WDCA Greenville, SC: WHNS 21 (now FOX) Topeka-KLDH (now KTKA) Casper-KFNB (aired late night) IIRC, WUHF in Rochester also carried it. That was the only news it had for a while, until it launched its own 10 PM news in the 90s (which is now produced by CBS affiliate WROC-TV, after the disastrous News Central experiment run by many of the Sinclair-owned stations crashed and burned). KMEG (CBS) in Sioux City. They weren't doing local news at the time, except a few one-minute updates, so they ran INN at 10pm (central) against the local news on the ABC & NBC affiliates. It didn't last long at ten, probably until the first ratings came it. Then it was back to a sitcom at 10. They continued with INN at 11 or 11:30 for awhile, probably until they could end the contract with INN.

WDYR-LP 33 in Dyersburg, TN had them for a short time in the late 90's when they were trying to be a local independent and before they were sold to TCT, something like a cheap local version of TBN. For a time, it was carried by the old WTWS-TV channel 26 of New London, CT (Hartford/New Haven market). KBHK 44 in San Francisco had INN for a while, although I'm not sure if it was concurrent with KICU. It definitely aired on KMSP in the Twin Cities; indeed, there's at least one aircheck of it on the TC Media Now site (http://tcmedianow.com/video/kmsp-tv-prime-time-news-local-and-independentnews-network-june-11-1981-jeff-bailon). I'm pretty sure that it also aired at some point on most of the (other) independent stations in (or near) Wisconsin--although I can't remember many specifics. I thought WLVI-56 here in Boston carried "Independent Network News" for a time in the mid-1980's at 10:30 P.M. During that time, the station had launched a 10 P.M. newscast on weeknights, but it was still only a half-hour. Louisville-WDRB Chattanooga-WRIP (WDSI) Isn't the title "Independent Network" a paradox? Maybe, though I think the naming supposed to meant providing a network-quality newscast to independent stations. Though of course, some network affiliates also carried INN -- in addition to what was already mentioned, WEYI in Saginaw also carried INN at 11PM, in lieu of a local newscast at that time (during the 1980s until the mid-1990s, WEYI only had a 5:30PM local newscast on weekdays). In Tampa Bay, WTOG also carried INN, both the midday and nighttime newscasts. However, in the mid-1980s, the midday report was replaced with a two-hour magazine style program, "Inday", which included an INN news segment. However, WFTS picked up "Inday" (as it was syndicated separately from INN's regular newscast), placing INN's newscasts on two different stations for a time. Two notes of trivial trivia: 1. The local anchor, Jeff Ballion, is still with KMSP. 2. Isn't the title "Independent Network" a paradox? About like the "Lawrence Welk Network." Not every city carried Welk at the same time but it was a network-quality syndicated show. Now back on topic: here's a list of what I assume were the original 41 stations carrying INN, from Broadcasting in December 1980: WPIX New York KCOP Los Angeles WGN Chicago WTAF (WTXF) Philadelphia KBHK San Francisco

WSBK Boston WKBD Detroit WDCA Washington, DC KXTX Dallas WPGH Pittsburgh KHTV (KIAH) Houston KMSP Minneapolis KSTW Seattle KDNL St. Louis WANX (WGCL) Atlanta WTTV Indianapolis KWGN Denver KTXL Sacramento KPTV Portland, OR KBMA (KSHB) Kansas City WVTV Milwaukee WUTV Buffalo WSFJ Columbus, OH WPTY Memphis WGGS Greenville, SC KGMC Oklahoma City WOFL Orlando WDRB Louisville KSTU Salt Lake City WYAH (WGNT) Norfolk WTVE Harrisburg/Reading KMPH Fresno WLRE (WGBA) Green Bay WBHW Springfield, IL KZAZ Tucson WFFT Ft. Wayne KCIK El Paso WQRF Rockford, IL KADN Lafayette, LA KVVU Las Vegas WJAN Canton, OH As you're mentioning present-day calls for some stations: Now back on topic: here's a list of what I assume were the original 41 stations carrying INN, from Broadcasting in December 1980: WTAF (WTXF) Philadelphia KBHK (KBCW) San Francisco KHTV (KIAH) Houston WANX (WGCL) Atlanta KBMA (KSHB) Kansas City KGMC (KOCB) Oklahoma City WYAH (WGNT) Norfolk WLRE (WGBA) Green Bay WBHW (WRSP) Springfield, IL KZAZ (KMSB)Tucson KCIK (KFOX) El Paso WJAN (WDLI) Canton, OH And since KJNP was technically an independent station, I think they were able to tape the INN feed

themselves instead of letting KUAC do it and send the tape there (they were the only two stations in Fairbanks at the time that received the bulk of their programming via satellite). TV Shows that ran too long. Remember when TV Shows ran too long meaning 2-3 years before they finally left the air. I thought of a couple shows that should've ended 2-3 years before they did. Beverly Hills 90210 (1990 - 2000) should've called it quits either in 1996 or 1997. NYPD Blue (1993 - 2004) should've ended in May 2002 or May 2003. Seinfield (1990 - 98) should've ended in 1996. Two and a Half Men (2002 - present) should've ended before replacing Charlie Sheen. Melrose Place (1992 - 1999) should've ended a year earlier say 1998. The Cosby Show (1984 - 1992) should've called it quits in 1990 or 1991. Growing Pains (1985 - 1992) see The Cosby Show. Family Matters (1989 - 1998) could've ended it when ABC cancelled them in 1997. 'Dallas' and 'Knot's Landing'-seriously, did anyone actually watch these shows after about 1987? Just about any CBS sitcom from the '70s that ran til the early-mid '80s: 'All in the Family/Archie Bunker's Place' 'The Jeffersons', 'One Day at a Time', 'Alice'. In retrospect, they would have been better off not doing 'Atchie's Place' at all. 'The Jeffersons' has been cited here as one of the 'worst cancellations'. Certainly, CBS should have given it a better send-off in '85, but they probably should have cancelled it , and 'Alice', a year earlier. 'One Day...' was another one that 'everybody' watched, but not in its last season. I would have had 'Frasier' on this list around 1999-2000, but that one actually improved in its last couple of years, even if it was nowhere near its peak. 'Benson'..another one often mentioned under 'worst final episode', since it left an unresolved cliffhanger regarding the election between the title character and his friend/boss, the Governor. They should have just pulled the plug a year or two sooner, and moved up that storyline to give Benson 'a year at the top' as the new governor. (Actually, the producers had very interesting plans for the unmade season 8; with Benson becoming a senator, and, as the show became something of a murder-mystery spoof, he would have ended up as President(possibly requiring a TV-movie to finish that storyline, and the series' run). 'Night Court'-a great show until it left Thursdays. All the characters 'evolved', in mostly unfunny ways, and more episodes dealt with storylines outside of working/courtroom hours, leaving less time for the 'wackos' appearing before the bench. Should have been cancelled in 1990, or, if it continued, they should have wrapped it up when they resolved the long storyline about Dan and the 'Phil(or is it Will?) Foundation. Full House..seriously, 8 years? Who's the Boss?...see above. CSI Miami...yes, still running, but officially 'on the bubble'. Just saw the season finale last night(via On Demand), and it's obviously run out of steam. The episode even ended on a curiously 'upbeat' note, instead of with some montage of 'grim' David Caruso walking in slo-mo accompanied by forgettable rap or indie music. It looked like an 'unofficial' farewell. Since they didn't bother with a season-ending cliffhanger..and ended the season a month early, to make room for that Robert

DeNiro-produced cop drama...maybe the party.... Cool..is over! Good Times (1974 - 79) should've left a year earlier. All in the Family/Archie Bunker's Place (1971 - 1983) should've ended after Mike and Gloria was written off the show. The Jeffersons (1975 -1985) could've ended a year or 2 earlier. Friends (1994 - 2004) see The Jeffersons. Married With Children ran at least five years too long. Simpsons - was a good show but it ran its course about 5 years ago and should have been canceled by now. The last 3 years of the show are just redundant and old hat. Any show in it that has children as the main character(s) should be cancelled once the kid(s) grow(s) up. Bringing in new "cutesy" kids just because the original child stars are growing up is a sure-fire shark jump! I believe that the original 90210 should have been cancelled much earlier, like say, right after high school graduation. Once they hit college, the show began to lose direction and focus. When the WB and UPN were merged to form the CW, Everwood was axed to make room for one final season of Seventh Heaven. BOTH shows were well over the shark by then, but it seems that if one show had to give way for the other, Everwood should have been allowed to continue, while Seventh Heaven got the axe! Any show that brings in a new, younger child actor to try and "cuten up" the show has already jumped the shark and should be cancelled. Oliver on the Brady Bunch. The Partridge Family even introduced a new kid in it's last year. Family Ties. Cosby. The list is endless. I believe "Rugrats" and "Dexter's Laboratory" ran too long after production on both series was revived. Their original runs and revived runs differ in artwork, stories, and characterizations. "SpongeBob Squarepants", "The Powerpuff Girls", and "Johnny Bravo" also ran too long after their creators were no longer available to help with their productions. Those series had different styles and characterizations after their creators were gone ("SpongeBob Squarepants" and "The Powerpuff Girls" should have ended before the theatrical movies based on their respective series were released). "Dynasty": should have ended after the infamous Moldavian Massacre, in which a so-called crack team of assassins managed to knock off a few extras in a church smaller than my bedroom. Likewise, "Dallas" should have ended after "Bobby's in the shower and Pam dreamed the entire previous season"; whatever credibility that show had vanished after that. "The Beverly Hillbillies" went on about two years too long, to the point that it was poking fun at the women's movement with its "Gals From GRUN" storyline. "Petticoat Junction" should have ended after Bea Benaderet's passing; God love June Lockhart, but she never quite fit in, and Edgar Buchanan was a character actor, not a star.

And "Life With Lucy" lasted about seven weeks too long; it should have been canceled after the first episode. Likewise, Lucille Ball should have stopped with "The Lucy Show," since "Here's Lucy" seemed to be a weekly extended sketch with a celebrity guest. If variety shows count, then think The Jackie Gleason Show, which was on the verge of heading to the proverbial glue factory in 1966 when he was persuaded to revive his Honeymooners sketches in an hour-long musical format. But by 1968-69 he once more ran out of gas, and was running almost wholly on fumes by the time CBS finally pulled the plug in 1970. In addition, the well in Dean Martin's show by 1972 had begun to run dry (first doing whole shows centered on songs from key MGM musicals, then in what proved to be its final {1973-74} season the template for his "Celebrity Roasts" - which themselves, by the early 1980's, had likewise become stretched too thin). And while The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour of 1971-74 ended at the right moment, the two (1976-77) seasons of the subsequent Sonny & Cher Show were . . . well, two seasons too many. And to the point of June Lockhart in the final two seasons of Petticoat Junction (speaking of nothing in particular): Its cancellation, and CBS putting Mary Tyler Moore's new show in its place in the Saturday night time slot, was karma in a weird way, given that one of the MTM show's co-stars was Cloris Leachman - who, some dozen years earlier, had been replaced on Lassie by Ms. Lockhart. Another show that overstayed its welcome was the original (1968-80) Hawaii Five-O which should have ended upon Kam Fong's departure and the murder of his Chin Ho character. Though James MacArthur stayed one more season as "Danno," by the final season you had a cast-out-of-left-field William Smith along with Sharon Farrell and Moe Keale (the last two of whom seemed only along for the ride). I'd agree with M*A*S*H being on way too long. The last several seasons were hard to watch. BJ Hunnicut got very preachy, Charles Emerson Winchester was stiff and stern, Col Potter was more like a grandfather than an Army colonel and Loretta Swit was way past her prime. Alan Alda, being a great actor, seemed to have taken up a cause every show too. The comedy was waning. Add to that the Vietnam War was way over and there wasn't much fodder anymore to keep it going. Another show that is currently running but will probably make a future list is The Office. Too many character changes.... Have to agree about Gleason. He just seemed to be coasting those last two years, and I would have been just as happy if he'd done "The Honeymooners" as a straight sketch, without the songs, as he did in the '50s. In fact, in those last years, I was more inclined to watch the "Dating Game" and "Newlywed Game" at the same time on ABC. And here's a little tidbit for you: both Gleason's show and "Petticoat Junction" were canceled in 1970; Sheila MacRae was playing Alice Kramden and daughter Meredith was Billie Jo Bradley. They may be the only mother-daughter combination to get canceled in the same year. As I understand it, CBS was willing to bring Gleason back for '70-'71, but he and the network disagreed about the content; supposedly, the network wanted a mix of 'Honeymooners' and non-'Honeymooners' shows, while Jackie wanted to drop the variety shows and only do more Kramden-Norton adventures. Ultimately, they compromised, Gleason did a few more 'Honeymooners' specials, CBS reran some of the 1966-70 episodes in early '71, and, with Gleason's contract fulflilled, they parted ways...but not before CBS asked if Gleason had any

interest in playing a new sitcom character called 'Archie Bunker'. "CBS asked if Gleason had any interest in playing a new sitcom character called 'Archie Bunker'." All true, but it was only CBS' idea, not Norman Lear's, and neither Jackie Gleason nor Lear were interested in casting him as Archie Bunker in "All In The Family." Lear had Carroll O'Connor in mind for the role from the start (O'Connor starred in the original pilot for the show offered to ABC for the 1969-70 season, which only became available to CBS for 1970-71 after ABC passed on it-probably to its lasting regret). Gleason probably would have been successful as Archie if he'd done it, but we'll never know--it's hard to imagine anyone else but Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker. Gleason also turned down another year of the variety show, as mentioned above--he wanted to move on to a lighter workload centering on a movie role or two every year, which he did for the rest of his life until he passed in 1987 soon after he filmed his final major film role in "Nothing In Common", co-starring with Tom Hanks. Did Gleason stay on TV too long? The audiences didn't think so, his ratings were healthy right to the end, and while he may have made one two many "Smokey and the Bandit" films, his last work with Hanks in "Nothing In Common" was excellent, and the film likewise. Here is more TV Series that lasted too long: Law and Order (1990 - 2010) Should've cancelled it when Jerry Orbeck left the series in 2006. Cops (1989 - 2010) Could've called it quits in the mid 2000s Growing Pains (1985 - 1992) By 1989 when they bought Christy into show. America's Most Wanted (1988 - 2011 ,2011 -present) Even though they did catch alot of criminals the show ran way too long. Gunsmoke (1955 - 1975) - 20 years (about 9-10 years too long IMO). Golden Girls (1985 - 1992) 1-2 years too long. Agreed about all of the above except Golden Girls and America's Most Wanted. I think GG was just as funny in the last season as the first few. I'm not personally an AMW viewer, but just last week, another couple of criminals - scam artists who had cheated retirees out of their life savings - were caught because somebody IDed them after seeing them on an AMW segment. So as far as I'm concerned, that show provides a valuable service. The Cosby Show Night Court Alice The Jeffersons One Day at a Time The Waltons Diff'rent Strokes Facts of Life Dallas Three's Company Happy Days Laverne & Shirley Newhart

Murphy Brown Seinfeld was mentioned by one poster and that's harsh. Even in its last couple of seasons it was by far the funniest, wittiest show on the tube. It ended just at the right time. Actually, in a way Jerry Seinfeld was telling us he was pulling the plug before it got stale, when he made "going out on a high note" a main running gag in the episode "The Burning" in March of 1998. He later told an interviewer, IIRC for Time Magazine, that when the brass at NBC's parent company General Electric offered him $125 million in cash, stock options and a seat on the GE board to keep the show going for 1998-99, he still turned them down because he thought he had enough good story ideas for about 13 more shows (a half a season) and it was better to shut the series down a little too early than to pad it out and drag it on too long. Ten years of Smallville on first the WB then CW network. Makes me wonder why Seinfeld didn't work out some sort of deal with NBC to produce one final half-season's worth of shows, with the rest of the time to be filled by those "specials" that we have all seen, or perhaps a mid-season replacement. I never watched Seinfeld, so it wouldn't have mattered to me. I agree with the original 90210 should've cancelled it either in 1994 or 1995. That show ran far too long (to the late 1990s when almost all the original cast left). Since you've brought up Teri Copley I'd have to say "We Got It Made" lasted about five minutes too long. I think Fred Silverman was trying to duplicate the success of "Three's Company," which started when he was at ABC, but "We Got It Made" almost made "Three's Company" look like Shakespeare. (BTW, Silverman's company developed this show; he had already been given his walking papers as head of NBC two years before this show debuted in 1983.) The "Prime Time Begins..." name only referred to the five NBC O&Os at the time (WNBC, KNBC, WMAQ, WRC, and WKYC), which bought all five shows to air as prime-time lead-ins--although they marketed the shows as being part of prime time (hence the name). In the case of WMAQ, yes, that meant that there were ads saying "Prime Time Begins at 6:30". I vaguely remember that then-CBS-owned WCAU (but not the other CBS O&Os) and maybe even KTLA were also experimenting with checkerboarding around that time. Also, even though it wasn't officially part of the "Prime Time Begins..." lineup, I think that at least some of the NBC O&Os also bought "Throb"--and usually aired it as a Saturday prime-time lead-in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throb